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.

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

