The Art of the Review

The Art of the Review is a 6-week-long workshop with writer, critic, and academic Katie Kadue. The class will take place on Zoom on Sundays from July 13 until August 17 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. PST. Each participant will be able to submit one (1) piece of writing for workshop and receive written feedback from the instructor.

The reviews are in: reviews might be the most popular form of cultural criticism today. Book reviewing is at once self-effacing, a humble form of public service, and potentially self-aggrandizing; more than one critic has made their name with a takedown. In this course, we’ll go beyond the puff piece and the pan to consider what book reviews are—or ought to be—for. How can we preserve our own voice while still letting the reviewed work shine through? Is a “reviewer” the same as a “critic”? What makes a good review (and a good bad review)? How can we write a fair review of a book we hate, or, for that matter, a book we love? What makes a book worth reviewing in the first place? What—besides offering a thumbs-up or down—do reviews really do? Through assigned readings, short exercises, and workshops of student book reviews, we’ll consider the role of the review in the larger context of contemporary criticism as you work to develop your own reviewing style.

This workshop is $480. Registration closes on July 6 at 11:59 p.m. PST. For more information, please contact workshops@lareviewofbooks.org.

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Katie Kadue is a writer and academic. She has published reviews and other criticism in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Bookforum, and elsewhere.