In Defense of Negative Reviews
In Defense of Negative Reviews
May 15, 2026 4:00pm 5:00pm Coral Ballroom B
Honest, sharp, even brutal critique has always been part of a healthy reading culture, and somewhere along the way, book spaces convinced themselves it wasn’t. This panel pushes back. We’ll get into the consequences of writing critically, the strange double standard between professional criticism and the kind everyone else does, and why the loss of negative reviewing costs readers, writers, and book culture more than most people want to admit.