The veteran journalist who was randomly attacked during rush hour on the New York subway is speaking out, as police appeal to the public for information about her attacker.

Cate Corcoran, 51, was attacked on the A Train in Brooklyn around 6pm on Wednesday, as the train approached the Nostrand Avenue station.

Corcoran, the editor of real estate blog Brownstoner, was sitting and looking at her iPhone when a man viciously punched her in the face, sliced her cheek with an unknown object and then took her phone and ran from the train car.

'I just worried that I was going to bleed to death — fortunately, that didn’t happen,' Corcoran said in an interview with the New York Post.

Police said the attack was unprovoked and came without warning.

Cate Corcoran, 51, was attacked on the A Train in Brooklyn around 6pm on Wednesday. Police are seeking the suspect seen right in the brazen rush hour assault

Cops secure the scene as they investigate the assault. The woman was transported to hospital and received several stitches for the cut in her face

'I just worried that I was going to bleed to death — fortunately, that didn’t happen,' Corcoran said. The veteran journalist edits the Brooklyn real estate blog Brownstoner

'I have heard about a lot of the subway slashings over the year,' Corcoran said, referring to an apparent rising trend in the vicious attacks.

Witnesses said blood streamed down Corcoran's face after the attack, and that paramedics rushed to the scene.

'They [paramedics] wrapped everything, they wrapped her whole face and they took her out on a stretcher,' witness Joel Cabrera told CBS New York.

Corcoran was transported to an area hospital and received 40 stitches before being released later that evening.

The stoic New Yorker, who moved from San Francisco just weeks after the 9/11 terror attacks, said she would not be deterred from taking the train in the future.

'That would be impractical,' she told the Post. 'In the future I will be careful to ride in a car closer to the conductor and with more people in it.'

Meanwhile police have appealed to the public for information about her suspected attacker, who ran from the train and slipped through the Nostrand Station turnstiles before cops arrived at the scene.

Police describe the suspect as a black man with a beard, between the ages of 25 to 30, 5'11" to 6' tall, roughly 250 to 300lbs. He was wearing a red hooded jacket and black jeans at the time of the assault.

Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).