Well it was another strange year, but like the past few years, reading has been a tonic, a friend, a portal to the outside world. Here are my top ten picks of books both old and new from poetry to memoir to fiction.

• A River Called Time by Courttia Newland.
• Lote by Shola von Reinhold.
• Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters.
• Bitterhall by Helen McClory.
• Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli.
• Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles.
• Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan.
• Magnolia by Nina Mingya Powles.
• Homie by Danez Smith.
• sikfan glaschu by Sean Wai Keung.

Here is everything I read in 2021:

1. Byobu – Ida Vitale
2. Night Sky with Exit Wounds – Ocean Vuong
3. Olga Dies Dreaming – Xochitl Gonzalez
4. Faces In The Crowd – Valeria Luiselli
5. Experiments in Imagining Otherwise – Lola Olufemi
6. The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney – Okechukwu Nzelu
7. Rotten Days in Late Summer – Ralf Webb
8. The Story of My Teeth – Valeria Luiselli
9. A Recipe for Sorcery – Vanessa Kisuule
10. Notes on Loneliness – Daniel Cockrill
11. Flip The Script – Arusa Qureshi
12. Blind Spot – Maud Rowell
13. Swimming in the Dark – Tomasz Jędrowski
14. Tell Me How It Ends – Valeria Luiselli
15. How We Are Translated – Jessica Gaitán Johannesson
16. C+nto – Joelle Taylor
17. Kindred – Octavia Butler
18. The Rabbit Magician Plate – Judith Kazantzis
19. The Gospel According to Cane – Courttia Newland
20. Autumn – Ali Smith
21. The New University – James Coe
22. A Thousand Mornings – Mary Oliver
23. Signs Preceding the End of the World – Yuri Herrera
24. The End – Katie Goh
25. Deep Wheel Orcadia – Harry Josephine Giles
26. Magnolia – Nina Mingya Powles
27. Queer Poets of Color – Christopher Soto
28. The Selfless Act of Breathing – JJ Bola
29. Keeping The House – Tice Cin
30. A Blood Condition – Kayo Chingonyi
31. Quesadillas – Juan Pablo Villalobos
32. Morgan & Me – Hamish Whyte
33. Detransition, Baby – Torrey Peters
34. Ballad of a Happy Immigrant – Leo Boix
35. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
36. The Tradition – Jericho Brown
37. Paul – Daisy Lafarge
38. The One Who Wrote Destiny – Nikesh Shukla
39. The Appendix – Liam Konemann
40. Burnt sugar – Avni Doshi
41. Love That Journey For Me – Emily Garside
42. A River Called Time – Courttia Newland
43. Rendang – Will Harris
44. Under the Blue – Oana Aristide
45. The Topeka School – Ben Lerner
46. The Prosperities of Perpetual Light – Julian Aguon
47. Small Bodies of Water – Nina Mingya Powles
48. Sincerity – Carol Ann Duffy
49. To Bury Our Fathers – Sergio Ramírez
50. The Carrying – Ada Limón
51. Granta 155: Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists
52. A Body Made of You – Melissa Lee-Houghton
53. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
54. pandemonium – Andrew McMillan
55. Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead – Emily Austin
56. We Have Always Been Here – Samra Habib
57. A Choosing – Liz Lochhead
58. HWFG – Chris McQueer
59. The Actual – Inua Ellams
60. The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett
61. sikfan glaschu – Sean Wai Keung
62. 100 Boyfriends – Brontez Purnell
63. Exciting Times – Naoise Dolan 
64. House of Names – Colm Tóibín 
65. Checkpoint – Joe Donnelly
66. Tongues of Fire – Seán Hewitt
67. Call Me By Your Name – André Aciman
68. Mexica Mix – Marina Sánchez
69. Bitterhall – Helen McClory
70. Homie – Danez Smith
71. Dryland – Sara Jaffe
72. Teeth in the Back of My Neck – Monika Radojevic
73. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
74. Occupation -Julián Fuks
75. Felicity – Mary Oliver
76. Scabby Queen – Kirstin Innes
77. My Darling from the Lions – Rachel Long
78. Postcolonial Love Poem – Natalie Diaz
79. Lairies – Steve Hollyman
80. Havana Year Zero – Karla Suárez
81. The Opposite of Fate – Amy Tan
82. Empty Houses – Brenda Navarro
83. Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson
84. The Speculative Book 2021 – Various Writers
85. Luckenbooth – Jenni Fagan
86. Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe –  Toshikazu Kawaguchi
87. Real Life- Brandon Taylor
88. Fourteen Poems – Issues 1, 2, 3
89. This Is Not About Me – Janice Galloway
90. On the Edges of Vision – Helen McClory
91. Lote – Shola von Reinhold

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