In December 2016, Public Books Editor in Chief Sharon Marcus spent a few days in Mumbai, participating in the Times of India Literary Festival and walking around the city. Mumbai, also known as ...
Ellis Avery
Ellis Avery (1972–2019) was the author of two award-winning novels published by Riverhead Books: The Last Nude (2012) and The Teahouse Fire (2007). She taught fiction writing at Columbia University. You can learn more about her life and work here and contribute to a cancer research fund in her memory here. (Author photograph by Christen Clifford) 
The Best Wall in the History of Walls: New Yorkers, Post-Election
On November 8, 2016, 80 percent of New York City voters cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton. On November 9, Donald Trump’s victory ...
What Sign of the MTA Elevator Zodiac Are You?
Aries: 161st Street. You offer all the highlights of the city in one Bronx experience, Aries. Your station-side door slides shut with the rattle of the Lower East Side’s metal security gates, and your groaning whirr ...
Flat, but Not Shallow
Imagine an Unbearable Lightness of Being written by a woman who trusts that her readers are smart enough not to need Kundera’s philosophical preaching, and you’ve got a taste of Karen Leh’s grievously ...
The People’s Climate March: Faces and Signs
This is the latest installment of Public Streets, a biweekly urban observations series curated by Ellis Avery. Last Sunday, September 21, New York City hosted the largest march against climate change ...
Notes on a Reading
We asked novelist and Public Books contributor Ellis Avery to tell us about the Public Books event she recently hosted at Three Lives Books in Manhattan’s West Village with Ruth Ozeki, the author of ...
On Christopher Street Pier
This is the inaugural installment of Public Streets, a series of observations on urban life curated by the novelist Ellis Avery. I’ve seen that child before, a boy of 10 or 12 in suspenders and a ...
For Now and for Nao
Both of the protagonists in Ruth Ozeki’s new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, set out to tell one story and wind up telling another. “Ruth”—like the book’s author a novelist living on an island in ...