2023 reading list

How do you synthesise a year in pages? How do you encapsulate the highs and lows, both personally and professionally, against the books that guided you toward the final hours of the final day of 2023? I feel very blessed to have started and ended this year in words. From wrapping up work on my debut novel out in 2024, to serving as judge for the Forward Prize for Poetry, to chairing at numerous literary festivals, I have had 365 days of prose and poetry and am all the luckier for it. Thank you to all these writers for their imagination, inspiration, and investigation of the world around us. Here are my top ten:

• The Front Runner – Patricia Nell Warren
• In Ascension – Martin MacInnes
• The Delivery – Margarita García Robayo
• Blackouts – Justin Torres
• The Married Man – Edmund White
• Bellies – Nicola Dinan
• The Love of Singular Men – Victor Heringer
• Cowboy – Kandace Siobhan Walker
• We Do What We Do in the Dark – Michelle Hart
• The Magician – Colm Tóibín

Here is my whole reading list from the year:

1. Trumpet – Jackie Kay
2. A Little Resurrection – Selina Nwulu
3. Is Mother Dead – Vigdis Hjorth
4. Let’s Get Back to the Party – Zak Salih
5. Woman Without Shame – Sandra Cisneros
6. How to Turn Into a Bird – María José Ferrada
7. Guillotine – Eduardo C. Corral
8. The Front Runner – Patricia Nell Warren
9. Fire Island – Jack Parlett
10. The Distance Between Us – Renato Cisneros
11. Machete – Tomás Q. Morín
12. Critique of The Criminal Justice System – Bibi June Schwithal
13. Deaf Republic – Ilya Kaminsky
14. The Cat Prince – Michael Pedersen
15. You Must Believe in Spring – Mohamed Tonsy
16. In Ascension – Martin MacInnes
17. Family Meal – Bryan Washington
18. The Delivery – Margarita García Robayo
19. When My Brother Was an Aztec – Natalie Diaz
20. Blackouts – Justin Torres
21. The Sun On My Head – Geovani Martins
22. The Whale Tattoo – Jon Ransom
23. Some of Us Just Fall – Polly Atkin
24. When I Sing, Mountains Dance – Irene Solà
25. We Are Made of Diamond Stuff – Isabel Waidner
26. The Wrong Person to Ask – Marjorie Lotfi
27. Brother & Sister Enter the Forest – Richard Mirabella 
28. Bellies – Nicola Dinan
29. The Love of Singular Men – Victor Heringer
30. The Fire Starters – Jan Carson
31. BFFs – Anahit Behrooz
32. Coasting – River Ellen MacAskill 
33. A Spell of Good Things – Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ 
34. Anam – André Dao
35. Speak, Okinawa – Elizabeth Miki Brina
36. From Our Own Fire – William Letford
37. Vehicle – Jen Calleja
38. The Hurting Kind – Ada Limón
39. The Late Americans – Brandon Taylor
40. Small Days and Nights – Tishani Doshi
41. Our Young Man – Edmund White
42. The Married Man – Edmund White
43. Leading Men – Christopher Castellani
44. Imperium – Jay Gao
45. They Both Die at the End – Adam Silvera
46. We Do What We Do in the Dark – Michelle Hart
47. If I Survive You – Jonathan Escoffery
48. Thirsty Animals – Rachelle Atalla
49. Bored Gay Werewolf – Tony Santorella 
50. Love In The Big City – Sang Young Park
51. Owlish – Dorothy Tse
52. White Ghosts – Katie Hale
53. Heritage Aesthetics – Anthony Anaxagarou
54. Self-Portrait As Othello – Jason Allen-Paisant
55. Cowboy – Kandace Siobhan Walker
56. A Change In The Air – Jane Clarke
57. Couplets, Couplets – Maggie Millner
58. Bad Diaspora Poems – Momtaza Mehri
59. Up Late – Nick Laird
60. Isdal – Susannah Dickey
61. Ink Cloud Reader – Kit Fan
62. Content Warning – Akwake Emezi
63. Cane, Corn + Gully – Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa
64. A Method, A Path – Rowan Evans
65. Unmothered – AJ Akoto
66. Routes – Rhiya Pau
67. Say It With Me – Vanessa Lampert
68. Velvel’s Violin – Jacqueline Sapphra
69. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency – Chen Chen
70. Home Is Not A Place – Roger Robinson
71. The Home Child – Liz Berry
72. Manorism – Yomi Sode
73. Feed the Beast – Pádraig Ó Tuama
74. Foundry Songs – Dean Rhetoric
75. Rain Noise – Elle Heedles
76. Crossing – Pajtim Statovci
77. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst 
78. Woman of Light – Kali Fajardo-Anstine
79. Saltwater – Jessica Andrews
80. Night of the Living Rez – Morgan Talty
81. There But For The – Ali Smith
82. No One Is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood
83. So Tall It Ends In Heaven – Jayme Ringleb
84. Public Library and Other Stories – Ali Smith
85. My Cat Yugoslavia – Pajtim Statovci
86. Now Go – Karl Thomas Smith
87. A Guest at The Feast – Colm Tóibín
88. The Magical Language of Others – E.J. Koh
89. The Foghorn Echoes – Danny Ramadan
90. Mr. Loverman – Bernardine Evaristo
91. Seasonal Disturbances – Karen McCarthy Woolf
92. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
93. Diaries of a Terrorist – Christopher Soto 
94. Out of The Woods – Luke Turner
95. Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
96. The Magician – Colm Tóibín
97. Flèche – Mary Jean Chan
98. Either/Or – Elif Batuman