T191.
So You Can Write. But Can You Write a Book Review?
Thursday, March 24, 2022
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
To review a book connects readers with an unfamiliar text. And it’s an artistic project of its own. Yet it also embarks on a critical engagement with the work. How can all of these things be simultaneously true? Five writers and editors—a scholar of Black intellectual practice, a prizewinning poetry critic, a PEN award-winner, an expert in horror and a former books editor of the L.A. Times—discuss the art, craft and practice of book reviewing, exploring points of intersection and difference.
Participants
Adriana E. Ramírez is a Mexican Colombian writer, essayist, critic and poet based in Pittsburgh. She won the inaugural PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize (2015) for her novella-length work of nonfiction, Dead Boys. Her full-length work of nonfiction, The Violence, is forthcoming.
Carolyn Kellogg is a writer and critic. For three years she served as books editor at the Los Angeles Times, and she was a judge of the National Book Award in nonfiction in 2019.
Vidyan Ravinthiran teaches at Harvard. The author of two books of poetry and an award-winning study of Elizabeth Bishop, he helps organize Ledbury Critics, a scheme for increasing racial diversity in book reviewing.
Walton Muyumba’s essays have appeared in Oxford American and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author of The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism. He teaches literature at Indiana University.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer. He’s the author of Coyote Songs and Zero Saints. His work has been translated into three languages, optioned for film, and nominated to the Wonderland Book Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Locus Award.
