I write both fiction and nonfiction. I am the Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in NYC, and I teach writing at Princeton University. I am the author of three  books, most recently The Good-Enough Life (Princeton University Press, 2022). Before that I wrote Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki (SUNY Press, 2019) and A Partial Enlightenment: What Modern Literature and Buddhism Can Teach Us About Living Well without Perfection (Columbia University Press, 2021). From 2014-2021 I was also co-editor of Shifter Magazine, a journal of art, fiction, and philosophy. My writing has appeared in Aeon, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Post, Truthout, and elsewhere. My work has been discussed in the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Irish Times, the LA Review of Books, Vogue Japan, and elsewhere.

I publish as Avram, but everyone calls me Avi. I can be reached by email aalpert (at) princeton (dot) edu