Gal Beckerman is an author and editor at the New York Times Book Review.

Before coming to the Times, Gal was the opinion editor at the Forward newspaper and a staff editor and writer at the Columbia Journalism Review. His writing has appeared in a number of places over the years, including the Wall Street Journal, the New Republic and Bookforum.

His first book, “When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone,” won two major book awards and was chosen as a book of the year by the New Yorker and The Washington Post. His second book will be published by Crown in 2020.

Gal grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from Reed College. He holds two masters degrees from Columbia University and is also finishing a PhD there in media studies.

Over the years he also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, lived in Berlin as a German Chancellor Fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and broke his arm almost in half while biking across France.  

Gal now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.