The Reader: Uli Beutter Cohen

In December 2013, artist Uli Beutter Cohen asked a young woman on the Q train what she was reading, and if she was ok to have her picture taken.

It had caught Uli's attention that New York City was a place where more people would read on the subway than anywhere else – always with a special sense of pride, and many emotions.

Uli posted the picture of the women – a young dancer – reading “Catching Fire” on Instagram, on a new account she called Subway Book Review. The caption read "I liked the first two movies and wanted to read the book. I like post-apocalyptic books”.

Today, the Subway Book Review is a global community and social media phenomenon, portrayed all the way from the BBC to Glamour to DER SPIEGEL.

In episode 3 of the Wunderbar Together podcast, Uli shares how growing up in Germany shaped her, how moving to Portland, OR, turned her into a young entrepreneur, and how she built Subway Book Review into a platform with hundreds of thousands of followers. In our update call at the very end, she shares her radical reinvention in the current crisis.