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Emily Nussbaum

arts Maturity 7-9 Next article →

Emily Nussbaum is a writer who studies art. She is a critic and an arts journalist. A critic is someone who watches or reads art. Then they write about what they think. She works for a famous magazine called The New Yorker. For a long time, she was a television critic. This means she watched many TV shows. Now, she is a theater critic. She writes about plays on a stage.

Writing reviews is a special way to work. Emily began by writing about TV shows she loved. She really liked a show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She posted her thoughts on a website. Later, she worked for many different places. She wrote for Lingua Franca and Slate. She also wrote for The New York Times. At New York magazine, she created the Approval Matrix. This was a tool to help people talk about culture.

Emily grew up in the United States. Her parents are Toby and Bernard Nussbaum. Her father worked for President Bill Clinton. Emily grew up in Scarsdale, New York. She went to Oberlin College in 1988. After that, she went to New York University. She earned a master's degree in poetry. She even started a doctoral program in literature. She decided not to become a teacher.

Many people have given Emily big awards. In 2014, she won a National Magazine Award. This was for her columns and her commentary. In 2016, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. This is a very important prize for writers. She has worked at The New Yorker since 2011. She was the television critic there until 2019. In 2025, she became the theater critic.

Emily's life is full of stories and art. She is Jewish and lives with her family. She is married to a journalist named Clive Thompson. They have two children together. Her work helps us understand the things we watch. She looks closely at the stories on our screens. She also looks at the stories on stage. We can learn a lot from her reviews.

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