Reviewers on Reviewing: Reviews as Texts

In 2025, ARB contributor Roseanna Pendlebury arranged a series of roundtables with SFF reviewers, originally intended for Nerds of a Feather. For some involved publishing reasons, this wound up being a better fit at ARB, and so, thanks to Roseanna & the roundtable participants, we are able to present these four discussions. Hopefully more to come in the future! These discussions have been lightly edited for clarity. * * * Roseanna Pendlebury: Today in our Reviewers on Reviewing project, we’ll be looking at how to write reviews that are good as texts, for their own aesthetic worth, as well as for achieving more utilitarian goals. Today’s panel participants have all written some stunning pieces of prose, and have a wide range of experience across writing. Could you please introduce yourselves? Arturo Serrano: I’ve reviewed SFF for Nerds of a Feather since 2021, and before that, I used to write reviews for Hypable. As a member of Nerds of a Feather, I’ve won the Ignyte (Critics) and Hugo…