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Keynote: Carlos Lozada says read 'like a human being' — widen tastes, reread and fight over books
Summary
Pulitzer-winning critic Carlos Lozada asked listeners to treat books like friends, read across difference (and even books they dislike), and warned that book bans and device distraction flatten imagination. He urged reading as a human, not only civic, practice.
Carlos Lozada delivered the summit keynote, urging a human-centered approach to reading: choose books like friends, reread, wrestle with texts that challenge you and resist turning reading into a moral obligation. He said readers should be willing to "fight over books"—to engage with works that unsettle them—and to reread as a way of tracking personal growth.
Lozada connected reading habits to civic and imaginative capacities, arguing that book banning narrows the mind and that long-form reading builds empathy. He offered practical encouragement to create reading memories and to make space for sustained attention amid competing digital distractions.
