How can I create a public list of event attendees?
You can do this using profiles


Create a smart group of all attendees of the event
Create manage acl to grant view permission for authenticated and anonymous user to view contacts from smart group.
Create a profile for search and include fields that you want to show.
Create manage acl to use the above  created profile for search for anonymous user
Create a post/page on wordpress and include profile search short code.


Also you can use content views wordpress instead profile to show contact belonging to smart group