Another year in which I actively sought to use my reading to learn and bear witness in whatever way possible during the most challenging of times. I’m grateful to these novelists, poets, and thinkers for their great minds and powerful words. I love literature and poetry because it has the power to expand the mind, to make us feel and laugh, to cry, it upsets and enrages. These books help space for a whole torrent of emotions.

Honourable mentions: Yr Dead by Sam Sax, The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer, Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin and Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

1. Shy – Max Porter
2. A Previous Life – Edmund White
3. The Night Alphabet – Joelle Taylor
4. The Sleep Watcher – Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
5. Chaos – Edmund White
6. Hot Tears Through Velvet Rage – Adriann Ramirez
7. Unwritten Woman – Hannah Lavery
8. This too is a glistening – Alycia Pirmohamed, Jessica J. Lee, Nina Mingya Powles, Pratyusha
9. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments – Saidiya Hartman
10. Hijab Butch Blues – Lamya H
11. Ishmael Mask – Charles Kell
12. Headshot – Rita Bullwinkel
13. Wandering Stars – Tommy Orange
14. Mister, Mister – Guy Gunaratne
15. Ordinary Notes – Christina Sharpe
16. Borderlands – Gloria Anzaldúa
17. Deviants – Santanu Bhattacharya
18. Out of Place – Edward Said
19. Monstrilio – Gerardo Sámano Córdova
20. The Pen and the Sword – Edward Said
21. Impossible Heat – Ciara Maguire
22. How to Love a Country – Richard Blanco
23. Recognising the Stranger – Isabella Hammad
24. Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield
25. Minor Detail – Adania Shibli
26. Hombrecito – Santiago Jose Sanchez 
27. Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems – Dionne Brand
28. A Flat Place – Noreen Masud
29. Among Strange Victims – Daniel Saldaña París
30. The Adult – Bronwyn Fischer
31. Martyr! – Kaveh Akbar
32. The Edges – Angelo Tijssens
33. Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak & Dogs – Jordan Stephens
34. Person Unlimited – Dean Atta
35. Siblings – Jay Bernard, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris, Nisha Ramayya
36. This Love – Lotte Jeffs
37. The Three of Us – Sareeta Domingo
38. The Cross of Redemption – James Baldwin
39. The Lookback Window – Kyle Dillon Hertz
40. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
41. When We Were Birds – Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
42. Spoilt Creatures – Amy Twigg
43. Wild Geese – Soula Emmanuel
44. From Saturn to Glasgow: Fifty Favourite Poems – Edwin Morgan
45. Intervals – Marianne Brooker
46. Still Life with Feeding Snake – John Burnside
47. Happy Death Club – Naomi Westerman
48. In Wolf’s Skin – Titilayo Farukuoye
49. Napalm in the Heart – Pol Guasch
50. Evenings and Weekends – Oisín McKenna
51. Them! – Harry Josephine Giles
52. Yr Dead – Sam Sax
53. The Private Lives of Tree – Alejandro Zambra
54. Plot Twist – Breea Keenan
55. Death in Venice & Other Stories – Thomas Mann
56. Not a River – Selva Almada
57. Blessings – Chukwuebuka Ibeh
58. The Lodgers – Holly Pester
59. Medusa of the Roses – Navid Sinaki
60. Sweet Sour Romance – Giovanni Vitacolonna
61. Real Boys – Thomas Stewart
62. You Dreamed of Empires – Álvaro Enrigue
63. Notes of a Native Son – James Baldwin
64. Isaac – Curtis Garner
65. Enter Ghost – Isabella Hammad
66. Crooked Plow – Itamar Vieira Junior
67. Pity – Andrew McMillan
68. May Day – Jackie Kay
69. The Nix – Nathan Hill
70. Frantz Fanon: A Political Biography – Leo Zeilig
71. Rapture’s Road – Seán Hewitt 
72. Long Island – Colm Tóibín
73. On Palestine – Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé
74. Change – Édouard Louis
75. Mrs. S – K Patrick
76. How to Write An Autobiographical Novel – Alexander Chee
77. Rifqa – Mohammed El-Kurd
78. Darling – Jackie Kay
79. Fiere – Jackie Kay
80. Uprooting – Marchelle Farrell
81. Off Colour – Jackie Kay
82. The Raptures – Jan Carson
83. Obsessed! – H.L. Stryker
84. Prophet Song – Paul Lynch
85. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
86. Cemetery Boys – Aiden Thomas
87. Time Is A Mother – Ocean Vuong
88. Wandering Souls – Cecile Pin
89. Find Me – André Aciman
90. Some Strange Music Draws Me In – Griffin Hansbury
91. Open Throat – Henry Hoke