Sehgal was born circa 1981 in Northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C.[1] Her family moved frequently and, as a child she lived with her parents in Delhi, Manila, and Budapest before they returned to the United States and Northern Virginia.[1][3] Her parents and their families had become refugees during the Partition of India, migrating south into what is now India. Her father was born in Shimla where his family stopped on the way to Punjab. Her mother's family settled in Amritsar and Delhi.[1]
Sehgal studied political science as an undergraduate at McGill UniversityinMontreal.[3] After graduating, she moved to Delhi, where she had extended family, to work at an NGO.[3] Deciding to change fields, Sehgal entered graduate school after returning to the US, and earned an MFA from Columbia University.[3] She has said this was the beginning of her creative writing.[1]
Seghal settled in New York City to pursue her interest in literature and criticism. She moved up to becoming books editor for NPR,[4] and a senior editor at Publishers Weekly.[3] In 2012, she became an editor at The New York Times Book Review.[5][6]
Sehgal received the 2010 National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.[10][3][2] She won the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum's OneWorld Prize.[4] In 2021, she was recognized for her criticism by the New York Press Club.[2][11]
In 2023, Sehgal won the Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism. The judges wrote: "She exemplifies the virtues of subtlety, surprise, and above all, pleasure...from the smallest of units—the word, the phrase—to the largest: character, perspective, revelation."[12]
