Katya Wack, Author at Public Seminar

Interviews

The Myth of Plastic Recycling

Judith Enck on the failures of US regulation and the grassroots movements demanding accountability in her new book, The Problem With Plastic

April 9, 2026 • by Judith Enck and Katya Wack

When a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in 2023, most people saw a news story about a toxic spill, a controlled burn, and a small town blanketed in chemical smoke. What far fewer realized was that the substance deliberately set on fire was vinyl chloride: the building ...

On Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief

February 24, 2026 • by Katya Wack

A Guardian and a Thief (Knopf, 2025), the new novel by Megha Majumdar, unfolds over a single week in a not-so-distant future. Kolkata has been devastated by flooding and famine; Ma, a middle-class shelter manager, is preparing to flee the city with her father and two-year-old daughter to join her ...