What a year I had with all things writing, workshopping, editing, performing, and of course, reading. My top read of 2019 goes to the groundbreaking and utterly delicious Paul takes the form of a mortal girl by Andrea Lawlor. They have created such an intersting, nostalgic, sexy and moving work of fiction that centres itself in an unapologetically queer world.

Here is the complete list of what I read in 2019:

1. The Goldbum Variations – Helen McClory
2. Extra Teeth Magazine – Issue #1
3. The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner
4. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
5. A Single Man – Christopher Isherwood
6. It’s Not About the Burqa – edited by Mariam Khan
7. Ceremony – various authors + me
8. The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales – Kirsty Logan
9. Escape from Earth – Fraser MacDonald
10. The Seafarers – Stephen Rutt
11. A Superior Spectre – Angela Meyer
12. Stroke – Ricky Monahan Brown
13. Blushing Is For Sinners – Tracy Patrick
14. All the Time We Thought We Had – Gordon Darroch
15. Threads of Life – Clare Hunter
16. Overlander – Alan Brown
17. Nevertheless – Shane Strachan
18. The Doll Factory – Elizabeth Macneal
19. A Code for Carolyn: A Genomic Thriller – V. Anne Smith
20. Lotería Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives – Juan Felipe Herrera
21. The Line Becomes a River – Francisco Cantú
22. Amphibian – Christina Neuwirth
23. The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories
24. The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas
25. Gutter Magazine – Issue #18
26. Trout, Belly Up – Rodrigo Fuentes
27. Tokyo Ueno Station – Miri Yu
28. Vicky Romeo Plus Joolz – Ely Percy
29. We Are The End – Gonzalo C. Garcia
30. Far Off Places (literary magazine)
31. I Am A Pretty Circler – Iain Morrison
32. A Star Called Henry – Roddy Doyle
33. The Refugees – Viet Thanh Nguyen
34. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl – Andrea Lawlor
35. Memoirs of a Polar Bear – Yoko Tawada
36. Let Me Tell You This – Nadine Aisha Jassat
37. Wain – Rachel Plummer
38. Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney
39. Milkman – Anna Burns
40. We Were Always Here – various authors + me

This was truly a year like no other. Like many, I would never have predicted 2020 to turn out the way it did. I vividly can recall how I rang in 2020 on December 31st which was such a far cry to what today looks like. As trying as this year has been, I am grateful for the opportunities of growth in my writing career and for actively broadening my reading choices. I am thankful for these novelists, poets, and writers who helped guide me through the ups and downs of 2020. I am thankful for all the opportunities to speak, perform, and publish my own writing. Mostly, I am just thankful for writing and words and their ability to serve as a tonic and escape for me.

This year my top pick has to go to ‘Afropean’ by Johny Pitts which is not like anything I have read before. I don’t read much nonfiction but am grateful I spent time with this wonderful exploration of Black Europe. A truly eye opening read! I look forward to what Pitts does next.

Honourable mentions:

• Dead Girls, Selva Almada (translator, Annie McDermott)
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Dominicana, Angie Cruz
• Rainbow Milk, Paul Mendez
• I Won’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me, Juan Pablo Villalobos (translator, Daniel Hahn)

Here is everything I read in 2020:

1. Cockfight – María Fernanda Ampuero
2. The Edwin Morgan Twenties: Scotland – Edwin Morgan
3. If You Kept A Record of Sins – Andrea Bajani
4. I Won’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me – Juan Pablo Villalobos
5. The Havoc of Choice – Wanjiru Koinange
6. Afropean – Johnny Pitts
7. Memorial – Bryan Washington
8. Where The Memory Was – Hibaq Osman
9. Poor – Caleb Femi
10. To Be A Man – Nicole Krauss
11. You Will Be Safe Here – Damian Barr
12. Ramifications – Daniel Saldaña París
13. Dominicana – Angie Cruz
14. Mother Country – edited by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff
15. The Distance – Ivan Vladislavic
16. Me and White Supremacy – Layla F Saad
17. This Mournable Body – Tsitsi Dangarembga
18. Constitution Street – Jemma Neville
19. Dead Girls – Selva Almada
20. In Memory’s Dance – Murid L Keshtmand
21. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
22. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
23. The End of Eddy – Édouard Louis
24. The Wind That Lays Waste – Selva Almada
25. Rainbow Milk – Paul Mendez
26. Your Silence Will Not Protect You – Audre Lorde
27. Sons and Lovers – D.H Lawrence
28. The Dizziness of Freedom – Bad Betty Press
29. Holiday Heart – Maragrita García Robayo
30. We That Are Young – Preti Taneja
31. The Adventures of China Iron – Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
32. The Green Road – Anne Enright
33. An Orphan World – Giuseppe Caputo
34. Animals Eat Each Other – Elle Nash
35. Falsos Odiseos – Gabriel Rodríguez Liceaga
36. The Panopticon – Jenni Fagan
37. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
38. Hinge – Alycia Pirmohamed
39. The Black Flamingo – Dean Atta
40. Mayhem & Death – Helen McClory
41. Tonguit – Harry Josephine Giles
42. Jellyfish – Janice Galloway
43. The Spell – Alan Hollinghurst
44. Sal – Mick Kitson
45. Broken Sleep Books 2019 Anthology
46. The Poet X – Elizabeth Acevedo
47. Collected Stories – Janice Galloway
48. EARTH: 404 ink magazine
49. Hijito – Carlos Andrés Gómez
50. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous – Ocean Vuong