Pamela Paul


Pamela Paul is an American writer who is the editor of The New York Times Book Review. She is the editor of all New York Times book coverage. She joined the Times in 2011 and served as children's books editor and features editor for the Book Review before her 2013 and 2016 promotions.
She is a former columnist for The New York Times, for which she wrote the "Studied" column, and for Worth Magazine, for which she wrote about financial issues and family. She has been a contributor to Time magazine, and a regular writer for The Atlantic. Earlier in her career, Paul worked as senior editor at the erstwhile American Demographics magazine. She is also a former London- and New York-based correspondent to The Economist, where she wrote a monthly arts column from 1997 to 2002.
After the 2005 publication of her book Pornified, she testified on the subject of pornography before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She has appeared on television and radio shows in the U.S., Canada, and in the UK, speaking about social and cultural trends, literature and publishing, and on the various subjects of her five books.

Personal life

As a child of Jewish ancestry, she was drawn to reading about the Holocaust as an adolescent, and read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in college. She was at one time married to fellow Times columnist Bret Stephens.