Beejay Silcox began writing for ABR in September 2016 after infiltrating a Trump rally in rural Virginia. In 2018, she was ABR’s Fortieth Birthday Fellow. Her literary criticism and cultural commentary appears in national and international review publications.

What makes a fine critic?

Doubt. We have enough opinions – a vast, suffocating excess of certainty. I think our finest critics don’t just understand the distinction between opinion and criticism, they explore it. They’re our much-needed cartographers of context. And if we’re lucky, they’re also wondersmiths, and their work crackles with awe for the whole wild, maddening, and sublimely human project of storytelling.