On October 25, 2025, the musician St. Vincent talked with the New Yorker staff writer Vinson Cunningham at the 26th annual New Yorker Festival, a weekend of conversations, screenings, performances, and more. The Festival, which is the magazine’s signature event, was held in New York City and brought together leading voices in literature, film, comedy, television, politics, and medicine.

St. Vincent, the stage name of Annie Clark, is a musician, a producer, and a director, known internationally for her genre-defying music and her innovative multimedia artistry. She has won six Grammy Awards, including three Best Alternative Music Album Awards, for “St. Vincent,” “Daddy’s Home,” and her most recent release, “All Born Screaming.” Celebrated for her virtuosic guitar work, her sonic experimentation, her sharp lyrical narratives, and her ever-evolving visual style, St. Vincent has consistently garnered critical acclaim for pushing boundaries. Her fusion of art rock, electronic, and pop elements in her music has earned her a place among the most influential artists of her generation.

Vinson Cunningham joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2016. Since 2018, he has served as a critic for the magazine, writing about theatre, television, and more. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2024 and 2025, and was awarded the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for 2021-22. In 2020, he was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for his Profile of the comedian Tracy Morgan. He teaches at the Yale School of Art and at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and is a co-host of Critics at Large, The New Yorker’s weekly podcast about culture and the arts. His début novel, “Great Expectations,” came out in 2024.