Not a “best books” list by far, just the annual list of books I enjoyed reading over the previous year. As always, I present these in alphabetical order by author. They are a mix of genres (poetry, prose, art, graphic novel), and a mish-mash of books recently published and books I either finally got around to reading or have discovered years after they’ve been published:
- Disturbance by Ivy Alvarez
- Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
- Telephone by Jen Besemer
- Foxes on the Trampoline by Charlotte Boulay
- Rise in the Fall by Ana Bozicevic
- The God of Longing by Brent Calderwood
- Antigonick; Nay, Rather; and The Albertine Workout by Anne Carson
- Turn by Wendy Chin-Tanner
- Trespass by Thomas Dooley
- Boys Have Been… by Christopher Gaskins
- Crush by D. Gilson and Will Stockton
- Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa; Unpeopled Eden; and Autobiography of My Hungers by Rigoberto Gonzalez
- Contemplative Man by Brock Guthrie
- Revenance by Cynthia Hogue
- Prime by Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Saeed Jones, Rickey Laurentiis, Phillip B. Williams, and L. Lamar Wilson
- Missing You, Metropolis by Gary Jackson
- Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones
- Aviary, Bestiary by Joseph O. Legaspi
- The Burning Door by Tony Leuzzi
- Bombyonder by Reb Livingston
- Sumptuary Laws by Nyla Matuk
- The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion and Writing Down the Vision: Essays & Prophecies by Kei Miller
- A History of the Unmarried by Stephen S. Mills
- New York 1, Tel Aviv 0: Stories by Shelly Oria
- Silverchest by Carl Phillips
- Sylvia Plath: Drawings by Sylvia Plath
- Citizen by Claudia Rankine
- Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah by Patricia Smith
- Girls I Know by Douglas Trevor
- Reliquaria by R. A. Villanueva
- Only Ride by Megan Volpert
- Mysterious Acts By My People by Valerie Wetlaufer
- Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations by Minor White