How It Feels to Be Alive : Encounters With Art and Our Selves

When Megan O'Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. At the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. As a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation. Looking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made - often drawing on personal conversations with the artists - O'Grady examines the work's rippling impact, implicating sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imaginations and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does it offer?

Format/pages: hardback / 272 pages

ISBN: 9780374613327

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Year: 2026