2025! One for the books.
Like last year, I read more novels than ever before. I read some poetry collections. I read some screenplays. I read some stage plays. I even read a few graphic novels and one nonfiction book.
You know the deal. My end-of-the-year list is featured below, first with new additions to my list, then repeat offenders (those who have been on past lists but whose books I read for this time), then re-reads.
Not including the dozens of unread books that are stacked on my floor, on my desk, and on my ottoman, here are the books I read and enjoyed this year.
Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
Disintegration Made Plain and Easy [2025]
My very favorite debut poetry collection. It's surreal, absurd, tender, grotesque, laugh out loud funny, fabulist, & strange. A manuscript so strong that it inspired me to launch my own indie press so others would have the opportunity to read such a powerful book. I can't recommend this collection enough.
S. Craig Zahler
Fury of the Strongman [2021]
The Brigands of Rattleborge [2006]
Big Stone Grid [2016]
Silo [2020]
Hug Chickenpenny [2018]
Wraiths of the Broken Land [2013]
A Congregation of Jackals [2010]
Mean Business on North Ganson Street [2014]
I've been on a Zahler kick (see also: rampage) all year long. Four screenplays and for novels. The world needs more of his films. I loved all three of his movies so much that I started tracking down his screenplays and then his novels. The screenplay The Brigands of Rattleborge and the screenplay Fury of the Strongman are both near perfect scripts. Bloody and gruesome and ruthless and real. His novels (A Congregation of Jackals, Wraiths of the Broken Land, and Mean Business on North Ganson Street) are cinematic, bad to the bone, and unrelenting every step of the way. An outlier here, Hug Chickenpenny is actually pitched as YA. That being said, it’s like a darker version of Lemony Snicket or Edward Carey. I didn't expect to cry, but the final few pages got me. Across all of Zahler’s writing, he doesn't let up on the gas once the vehicle starts moving.
Olga Ravn
The Wax Child [2025]
I seem to get my best reading in at the end of the year. Finished on Christmas Even, The Wax Child by Olga Ravn is THAT NOVEL. Told in tiny fragments from the perspective of, you guessed it, a creature made out of wax, this is a weird story of witches, curses, royalty, history, and mayhem. It's folkloric, it's twisted, and it's about as strange and surreal as they come. Top five read of the year. Maybe top 1 or top 2. Only time will tell.
Irene Sola
I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness [2025]
Arguably the densest novel under 200 pages I've ever read. This took me months to finish, and often I was lost, then back on track, then lost again, but this book contains some of the most stunning lines and paragraphs I've ever read. A shuffle of magical, grotesque, disgusting, and beautiful. This felt like two dozen fairytales packed inside a small cabin in the woods. Folkloric perfection. I wish I could write like this.
Virginia Feito
Victorian Psycho [2025]
Very funny. Very dark. As if Duchess Goldblatt went on a killing spree. I didn't know if I'd enjoy this one (I don't really read period pieces) but I read it in a little over 24 hours and it quickly became one of my favorite novels of the year. As long as you don't have a weak stomach, I can't recommend this one enough. I can even see this one being a kindred spirit to Moshfegh's Lapvona.
Joy Williams
Concerning the Future of Souls [2024]
Harrow [2021]
Breaking and Entering [1988]
The Quick and the Dead [2000]
I almost included Joy Williams under ‘repeat offenders’ (see below), since I started diving into her writing last year (The Changeling is still my favorite of hers), but since I read so many of her books this year, and since she’s Joy Williams, she remains on the proper list. I read three of her novels this year. The Quick and the Dead has some of the best lines you'll ever read. Best dialogue, best descriptions. Breaking and Entering is a masterpiece. Harrow features a senior citizen death cult at the end of the world. Joy Williams might be my favorite living writer. No one can write drunk (see also: messy) adults better than her. No one.
Marcia Douglas
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread [2018]
I read this novel on the beach in the Caribbean and it enhanced both my vacation and my reading experience. Told in dream-like fragments and sharp vignette narratives, this book feels like a swirling of souls, ghosts floating above the palm trees to paint their various sides of the story. Rhythmic and poetic and surreal and strange. It's a novel unlike any other I've read.
Kyle Marbut
Black Swan Theory [2025]
One of my favorite debut poetry collections of 2025. Scratch that. One of my favorite poetry collections of 2025. Scratch that. One of my favorite books of 2025. I've read it twice in two months, which is rare. The symmetrical and inventive book is arranged with three untitled prose poems followed by an untitled four line poem. This repeats for 100 pages, with an opening/middle/ending featuring a single eight line poem. It's beautiful. It's strange. It's playful. It's untouchable. It has me in a chokehold. Get this book.
Laird Hunt
In the House in the Dark of the Woods [2018]
I've been working on a folklore novel for the last 4-5 years, and I read this book shortly after finishing a new (and hopefully final) draft. I'm grateful for this timeline, because had I read In the House in the Dark of the Woods in the midst of my own assemblage, I either would have 1) burned my manuscript because this novel is so damn good or 2) stolen elements of this novel because it is so damn good. What I'm saying is: this novel is so damn good. Right up my alley. Surrealist, strange, folkloric, fabulist. A fairy tale for the ages, my first time reading Laird Hunt, and one of my new favorite books. Ever.
Henry Goldkamp
Joy Buzzer [2025]
Henry Goldkamp’s collection of poems is also a masterclass in clowning, a masterclass in short form poetics, a masterclass is strange brevities meshing humor with sorrow, hilarities with hysterics. Every poem begins with “Hello My Name Is” and runs wild with that generative process. Slap a name tag on your face. Run sideways down the street.
Madeline Cash
Earth Angel [2023]
Laugh out loud short stories. Inventive short stories. Short stories I wish I'd written. So damn clever and original and hilarious and offensive and fun. It reminded me slightly of The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George (another of my favorite short story collections) if the author was more chronically online. I can't wait for Cash's debut novel, Lost Lambs, out in early 2026. This book owns.
Danniel Schoonebeek
Trébuchet [2016]
One of the better poetry collections I read this year. Bleak and dystopian and heavy and real. Political and war-torn and American and anti-American and anti-war. It makes sense Daniel Borzutzky blurbed this one. I need to check out his debut American Barricade.
"A world will begin. / A world do you hear me a world."
"Night the gaslight of death / swims like koi up the wall."
"With no war left to provie it the sun eliminates itself from the throne."
Jo Nesbø
Blood on Snow [2014]
I heard this novella was being made into a film, so I decided to check it out. I think I read this one in about three sittings. I couldn't put it down. The narrator's voice is so damn strong, the violence is so well done on the page, and it's much funnier than I expected. Now I need to read more Nesbø.
Liza Hudock
Reveille [2025]
One of the best debut poetry collections I've read. Full of life: the heavy shit, the reflective, the heartfelt, the honest, the tender. A great introduction. Some parts made me think of Mary Ruefle (high praise).
Chris Erickson
Henrytown [2025]
I’ve never read anything quite like this novel. Persona passages of Middle America reminding me of Joy Williams and Christine Schutt and Mary Robison yet not at all. Haunted broadcasts. Hysterical ham radio transmissions. Like finding cassettes from yesteryear in a basement that doesn't exist. Chris Erickson is a singular voice in fiction. It's even better if you get to see him in character as he reads/performs.
Natalia Theodoridou
Sour Cherry [2025]
I see a lot of blurb hate and how it’s so often a basic co-sign that doesn’t result in sales, but this cover blurb (these ten words alone) is the reason I checked out this debut novel, and I'm so glad I did. Sour Cherry is a masterfully done cyclical retelling of the fairytale Bluebeard where multiple POVs come and go, ghosts linger and haunt, a trunk of dresses gets perpetually heavier, trinkets pile up, gardens rot, and evil lurks on every page. Despite being timeless and trekking throughout unnamed locations, the landscapes are just as important as the characters. This is one dark fairytale. Just how I like them.
Daniel Khalastchi
The Story of Your Obstinate Survival [2024]
American Parables [2021]
Loved the tongue-twisting nature of these poems. I found out about Khalastchi through an ad on the podcast Between the Covers, where David Naimon quoted Sabrina Orah Mark’s blurb for The Story of Your Obstinate Survival. It was all I needed to request his two most recent books from the library (and later purchase for my own collection). I heard him read this past fall and the whole room was erupting in laughter.
There's a piece Khalastchi has called "Dear ____: I Want to be a Better Friend, I'm Sorry" and it’s become one of my very favorite poems. Absurd, strange, dreamy, sad, and packed with strong storytelling language.
Philip Ridley
The Passion of Darkly Noon [1997]
The Pitchfork Disney [1991]
Tender Napalm [2011]
Shivered [2012]
After watching (and loving) the film The Reflecting Skin (1990), I read three plays and one screenplay by Philip Ridley this year. Reading his work has been one of my favorite discoveries of 2025. Inspiring me to work on my dialogue. The Passion of Darkly Noon is a strange minimal countryside fables. Surreal in its desolate American backdrop and striking imagery. Shivered is so damn bleak. It’s all so damn bleak, no matter where you read. Really dark, really strong.
Vanessa Saunders
The Flat Woman [2024]
Mix a narrator who has bird feathers sprouting from her skin with an Elvis impersonator and I'm all the way in. This fast-paced novel is both surreal and all too real, like waking up from a strange dream only to find out it's even stranger outside your bedroom window. Complete with evil corporations, seagull terrorism, relationship struggles, and one hell of a quirky aunt, The Flat Woman has it all. A great debut novel.
Lewis Warsh
The Origin of the World [2001]
Alien Abduction [2015]
Debtor's Prison (w/ Julie Harrison) [2001]
In February of this year, the poet Andrew Weatherhead posted a picture of Warsh’s The Origin of the World and asked, "Do people know this is one of the best poetry books ever written?" One month later, after requesting it through my library, I finished reading it and I have to agree with Weatherhead. I really loved this collection, one broken up into a series of poems but which felt like one long poem. Split up into a series of sentences with open spaces in between, it's observational, autobiographical, and yet mixes and twists and reworks its own lines, like repetitive confessions constantly being re-translated and mistranslated and told in different ways. The kind of book you read and instantly need to write poems of your own. I love how he jumbles and scrambles language, plays with repetition, blends strange images and dreamspeak with the autobiographical. His book Alien Abduction is not quite as strong as The Origin of the World, but it’s damn good, and Debtor’s Prison is a multimedia release that blends lines of poetry and photography with dizzying / dazzling results.
Hedgie Choi
Salvage [2025]
This debut poetry collection by Hedgie Choi is one you need on your shelves. I was blown away by the surrealism mixed with heart mixed with humor mixed with lucid narratives. This book is fast paced and strange, funny and quirky and tender. Some poems are fifteen words long, while other longer poems feel like dreamy microfables. I can't recommend it enough.
Manya Wilkinson
Lublin [2024]
A parable. A fable. A fairytale. For something that begins so light-hearted and playful and laugh-out-loud funny (just like so many stories found in Grimms'), it takes a slow yet inevitable dark turn. One of the best novels I've read in the last few years. The ending will haunt me forever.
Montana James Thomas
Concerning the Dinner [2025]
Pomeranian [2023]
New York based poet, reading series host, and perfume enthusiast Montana James Thomas first caught my attention after I saw the cover of his debut collection, Pomeranian, floating around the internet. I quickly grabbed a copy and was enamored by the narrative poems, the absurdist fables, and the refreshing playfulness on the page. When I read in an interview that Montana took inspiration from both Russell Edson and Willy Wonka, it all made sense. While Pomeranian was his debut offering, his new collection, 2025’s Concerning the Dinner, is his debut full-length. A messy delicacy of a collection, his new self-published book reads like a tipsy buffet. A horse stuffed with hog stuffed with chicken stuffed with duck. Unhinged yet concise. Dense yet crystalline.
Claire Hopple
Take it Personally [2025]
I've read many of Claire Hopple's short stories through various online lit mags, but this was my first (and certainly not my last) time reading one of her novels. Take it Personally is a laugh out loud absurdist work of fiction. Nearly every sentence surprised me. I never knew where it would go next. It's funny, it's caffeinated, and it's packed with mystery and falsehoods and paranoia and uncertainties and questions. I read it in less than 48 hours while standing on my tip toes, as one should. It's like the half-baked sibling of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang or the kindred spirit to Kajillionaire (two of my favorite films), reminding me slightly of Joanna Ruocco's Dan or Hilary Leichter's Temporary (two of my favorite novels). Grab this book as soon as you can and learn how humor can and should work on the page.
Emily Bludworth de Barrios
Rich Wife [2025]
I'm a sucker for long poems, thematic poetry collections, and striking covers. This book has all three. My first time reading Emily Bludworth de Barrios, but most certainly not my last.
Evelio Rosero
Way Far Away [2024]
A fever dream of a deeply weird novella. Minimal and surreal. Like stumbling through the underworld with a pack of cigarettes and a headache.
Rachelle Toarmino
Hell Yeah [2025]
I read this poetry collection the morning before seeing Rachelle Toarmino read it in person. It was a full day of Hell Yeah. Split between three sections (Music, Flowers, Meat), this is a book that twists language, phrases, family, life, love. It's inward, it's outward, and it's sharp as hell. Her poem for her father titled "All My Life, Oh Lord" might be my favorite, as well as the Meat section of prose poems, or the final poem of the book, ending with a self-titled "Rachelle Toarmino" poem after Molly Brodak's "Molly Brodak". Bangers only.
Adrian Sobol
The Life of the Party is Harder to Find Until You’re the Last One Around [2020]
Hair Shirt [2025]
[starts chanting] HAIR SHIRT HAIR SHIRT. Adrian Sobol rules. This book of poems rules. It's even better if you have the honor of seeing him read from this book in person. These poems are heart-felt, humorous, strange, musical, and often theatrical pieces of art. All hail HAIR SHIRT. The Life of the Party, meanwhile, is one hell of a debut poetry collection. We laugh to keep from crying. We dance to keep from collapsing. James Tate's ghost wanders the corridors of these pages with a haunted grin on his face. As one should. As one does.
Thera Webb
The Witch, a Play [2025]
I wanted this book to be about 3x larger. Tiny, surrealist folk poems that had me hooked from the start. Dreamy and eerie and witchy fairytales. A book you can read in 30 minutes, yes, but a book you should read slowly, smoothly, over hours and days and weeks.
Samanta Schweblin
Fever Dream [2014]
Hell yes. Been meaning to read this for years, and once I finally opened it, I read it in two breaths. Is it horror? Is it a thriller? It is a surrealist nightmare? You decide. It’s not too late for you. Get out while you can.
Ryan Rivas
Nextdoor in Colonialtown [2022]
This book felt like a conversation starter. Something I wanted to share with friends and recommend to strangers. Combining photos of an Orlando neighborhood with the area's fragmented Nextdoor posts, the result is cursed, paranoid, hysterical, and strange. Some parts reminding me of my boomer Indiana relatives posting on Facebook while other parts felt like fever dream prose poems.
Scott Daughtridge DeMer
Then Then Then [2025]
Local man eats painting & begins to spiral. Or was he already spiraling before page one, before he found the sacred / haunted / enlightened text? Just as much an ekphrastic novella as it is a paranoid novella, an immersive novella, a fever dream novella, a rabbit hole novella. Equal parts House of Leaves and Babak Lakghomi's South. The journey will not be televised. It will be livestreamed. Eat more paint.
Olivia Cronk
Gwenda, Rodney [2024]
A poetry novel, not a novel in poems. Unlike anything I've ever read. I say that a lot, but it’s true. Gwendy, Rodney is like reading a stoned soap opera. Going to a half baked dinner party. Waking up from a startled dream.
Wayne Koestenbaum
Ultramarine [2022]
This nearly 500 page book of fragmented poems (or poetic fragments) was on my bedside nightstand for the last few years. I read a stanza or a page or a section nearly every evening. Because of that, this has felt like a companion. Always it was near me.
'those lakes I thought / were women's bodies / are actually clouds-- / those clouds I thought / were women's bodies / are actually lakes'
'I like your blue door I'm / not sure I like my blue / door maybe it needs to be green'
Tom Jenks
The Philosopher [2024]
Chimneys [2025]
No one writes prose poems quite like Tom Jenks. His thematic collection The Philosopher is right up my alley: a book-length project of prose poems all about a specific character. It’s weird, it’s poignant, funny, and unique. His chapbook Chimneys (through above/ground press) is equally as enjoyable.
“The doughnut is defined by its hole, and yet without the doughnut the hole has no meaning, explains the philosopher to the assistant in the supermarket café, which will close for refurbishment this evening, for the duration of the season.”
Claire Wahmanholm
Wilder [2018]
Meltwater [2023]
If Meltwater (2023) is liquid then Wilder (2018) is solid. Water and rock. River and rust. Two complimentary yet contrasting collections, where erasures and science are intertwined with alliteration and constraint, abecedarians and surrealism. I read both of these collections within 48 hours of each other so they feel like sequels, like two bleeding, breathing things. Mysterious and magical and haunting and real.
Daniel Kraus
Whalefall [2023]
Extremely difficult to put this book down. A man gets swallowed by a whale and only has a certain amount of oxygen left in his tank. What more do you need to hear? Read this book. It's a masterclass in pacing and a masterclass in whale facts. Someone compared it to The Martian and (having only seen the movie) that feels right. Apparently they recently finished filming the adaptation for Whalefall and Josh Brolin is in it. I'm in.
Jay Besemer
The Horse [2025]
Prolific Chicago poet Jay Besemer self-released his newest collection, The Horse, earlier this year and I couldn’t get enough of it. Each poem is written with plenty of white space to encourage breaths from the reader, and to help Besemer’s own breathing while writing these poems (written during a difficult time, which you can hear about on this insightful podcast episode here). I had the pleasure of hearing him read from this book at a house show and it was icing on the cake.
Christine Shan Shan Hou
A Promise [2025]
I had no expectations or context upon opening this collection. I knew nothing about Christine Shan Shan Hou and I knew nothing about this book. I simply submitted my manuscript to Blush Lit, and in order to do so, you have to purchase a book from their catalog, so I chose this one. I literally judged a book by its cover. What I found inside was a surprising and startling assemblage of grotesque and unhinged and moving poems. Weird in the best of ways. I read this book in one sitting. I’ll never be the same.
Marcus Silcock
Dream Dust [2025]
My blurb for this great collection: Marcus Silcock's newest collection, Dream Dust, is a masterful assemblage of prose poems. Are they autobiographical surrealisms or surrealist autobiographies? You decide. From Vegas to Seoul to Sitges to Wrocław, here we have a cosmic trip disguised as an international voyage. Prose poems with heart and dilated pupils. Tender yet absurd. Hallucinatory and strange, twirling through a fable, like taking psychedelics in the American desert and waking up in a Polish forest. Instead of a spaghetti western, this is a pierogi fever dream. This unique collection is full of forests and beer steins and cultural ceremonies and Eastern European architecture and magic broth. It's global, musical, and nostalgic every step of the way, like finding a tattered diary in a bowl of borscht. "You can count the tree rings on my forehead," Silcock promises us, later stating, "I am surrendering to this experience." We believe him and so we do the same. Through it all, Dream Dust is packed with sharp, punchy memories. Scraps of the past splashed in a foggy dew. If you try to find your way through these riveting narratives, know the compass is spinning and the map has caught fire. To open this book is to "roll the bone dice" and begin a new game. Give it a shot. See where you land.
Sarah Rose Nordgren
Darwin's Mother [2017]
Strange visceral poems. Narrative persona poems. Heartbreaking poems. Weirdness, grief-stricken poems. Along with this book, I also purchased Nordgren’s 2024 book Feathers: A Bird-Hat Wearer's Journal and requested her 2022 chapbook The Creation Museum and her 2014 collection Best Bones but I have yet to crack any of them open. 2026 will be the year I read much more of her writing.
Yuki Tanaka
Séance in Daylight [2018]
Chronicle of Drifting [2025]
I went to the Bull City Press table at AWP and asked for their weirdest book. Without thinking, Ross White handed me Séance in Daylight. It did not disappoint. I ate it up. I then grabbed Tanaka’s debut full-length, Chronicle of Drifting. There's surrealism that feels absurd and over-the-top, then there's Tanaka's surrealism, which feels more like peacefully daydreaming. Slightly floating at ease. Resting on a cloud. The title of this collection is all too fitting. A great debut collection. Hallucinatory, meditative, and unique.
Matthieu Simard
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace [2017]
A bleak fever dream. This would be 4.5 stars if I had the option. I loved the uncertainty, the quiet evil lurking around the corner, the rudeness of the locals. I don't read a lot of domestic / couple novels, but this one had a sideways tinge of surrealism I really enjoyed. A quick and strange novella.
Lauren K. Watel
Book of Potions [2025]
Potion = Poem + Fiction
I loved this collection of page-long prose poems. Surreal, captivating, heart-wrenching blocks of text. With blurbs from Sabrina Orah Mark and Ilya Kaminsky (and publication by Sarabande), I knew I'd be into this book before cracking it open. What lies within is a mixture of rage and fable, poignant political commentary and dreamy fairytale. From start to finish, this is one hell of a debut collection. A book that made me want to approach the blank page and write my own potions.
"What sounds like rain is tires on asphalt. What sounds like sunlight is death in the trees."
Angel Dionne
Bird Ornaments [2025]
Bird Ornaments is a collection of captivating and immersive poems. Surreal logic and dream speak. Fairy tales and fables. Card games and folklore and plenty of birds. Dionne has another collection coming out in 2026 and I can’t wait to share more. I’ve said too much.
Ann Jaderlund
Lonespeech [2024]
You could read this book in half an hour if you tried. I recommend you don't try. I recommend you read this book as slowly as possible. Tiny reflective nature poems deeply moving and unusual. Translated by Johannes Göransson so you know it slaps.
"Out of the earth
forest forest
mountain
river
someone has time"
and
"Where are you
where will
you be
this summer
I hear
the hands
the river"
Robert Seydel
Songs of S. [2014]
Beautiful book, heartbreaking story about the author. I grabbed this one while purchasing a bundle of books from Ugly Duckling. One of the best indie presses out there. "Calipers of the stars. / Toss yr hat in the ring. / It is a head flying / above mountains / when you have courage / & the night is large."
Threa Almontaser
The Wild Fox of Yemen [2021]
I remember reading Threa Almontaser's three dream interpretation prose poems back in 2020 (on The Rumpus) and was glad to finally get my hands on her full-length debut collection. With these dream interpretations spread throughout the book, the collection is equal parts coming-of-age and middle finger rage. Atmospheric poems of identity and personality and culture and selfhood.
Nick Lantz
The End of Everything and Everything That Comes After That [2024]
How to Dance as the Roof Caves in [2014]
We Don't Know We Don't Know [2010]
"I keep getting the same call telling me / America is wounded will I stop the bleeding.”
I feel like I read these three Nick Lantz poetry collections in one sitting so they all kind of blend and mesh and mold together. His writing is funny while also being tender, heartfelt while also being strange, goofy while also being serious. Apocalyptic, paranoid, and yet very relatable.
Tyree Daye
Cardinal [2020]
"Leaving is necessary some say // There is a whole ocean between you and a home // you can't fix your tongue to speak"
Compressed reflective family grief poems. I heard Tyree Daye speak on the ekphrastic at AWP and I grabbed this book upon returning home. My first time reading his work but most certainly not my last.
Brian Foley
The Constitution [2011]
There Must Be a Reason People Come Here [2022]
Foley masters the stripped down twisting of language. I loved how slowly his two collections forced me to read. As if a normal sentence was written, then reversed, then scrambled, then translated, then rewritten matter-of-factly. I couldn't put my finger on it, in the best of ways. The voice and the style is uniquely Foley.
Laura Paul
Film Elegy [2024]
A tribute to cinema, in particular the filmmaker Amy Halpern, and a book that feels as much like a screening as it does poetry. Like a stack of index cards from a missing film. Like a cinematic deep dive of grief and legacy. Film Elegy also acts nicely as a coffee table book. It's quite the object to behold.
Dan Ivec
On the Stairs [2014]
A sparse novella about childhood and bullying and coming-of-age and wanting to be alone while also wanting to fit in. I thought this book would be much more folkloric and magical, but was instead a rather down-to-earth book about finding your way in the world as a lost and lonely child.
John Ashbery
Breezeway [2015]
I didn't start reading Ashbery until 2025 (I know) and I started with this book. Ashbery heads will probably say I did it all wrong, but I adored this book. It was goofy and playful and stranger than I expected. I ate it up.
David Seung
Silkworm’s Pansori [2025]
Meditative poems about family and heritage and lineage and life. I love that Seung is also a stand-up comedian. All poets contain multitudes.
"the old woman skipped lunches,
folding meals into the dry earth.
Pacing the infant garden
the old man sowed his time.
My own father sprouts gray hairs now
waiting for me to grow"
Kai Ihns
Of [2024]
Experimental, transcendent, absurdist, and forever with a singular voice. No one writes like Kai Ihns. Lyrical, rhythmic, musical mayhem. It's icing on the cake that when she performs at readings, she does so from memory, without the use of any books or pages or aids to assist. So cool.
TC Eglington & Simon Davis
Thistlebone [2021]
Solid folk horror. It's PG-13 and I wanted R, but it held my attention and I will definitely be checking out book two.
Ron Padgett
Pink Dust [2025]
My introduction to the writing of Padgett. Reflective, matter-of-fact, strange, and funny. A quick read. I need to check out more of his poetry.
Filip Marinovich
Wolfman Librarian [2015]
"the human brain got too big / a flaw in evolution / that doesn't solve it stop / trying to solve it"
I bought this book because of the cover (something humanity tells us not to do) and I'm so glad I did.
Anne Sexton
Transformations [1971]
Fairytale retellings as recommended by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi. My introduction to the work of Anne Sexton. These are a trip! Really funny and rambling and strange. Easier to read than I expected, if that makes sense? I have a really weird manuscript-in-progress of fairytale retellings and I'm glad I read this *after* wrapping up that collection, because it probably would have been too inspirational/influential. High praise.
Samson Starkweather
Pain: the Board Game [2015]
For many years, I’ve owned and cherished Starkweather’s The First Four Books of Sampson Starkweather (2013), a 300 page tome of his writing, but it wasn’t until hearing him read on Zoom earlier this year that I (finally) tracked down Pain: the Board Game. It’s a book that tackles depression and daily struggles with jokes and outbursts and vents. This book feels like therapy for the author, and it’s one I found therapeutic to read. I’m looking forward to whatever it is Starkweather releases next.
Christy Prahl
With Her Hair on Fire [2025]
Compact prose poems. Funny, touching, strange. A book so small it can fit in your back pocket. It was a joy hearing Christy read from this book earlier this year.
Stefan Themerson
The Table That Ran Away to the Woods [2012]
All you need to know is the title of the book. A joyfully strange and fun 20 page children's book.
Dennis Covington
Salvation on Sand Mountain [1996]
Stranger than fiction.
Repeat offenders
The list below contains authors who have appeared on my end-of-the-year lists in the past, but whose work I read and enjoyed for the first time this year. Either a new book or one I missed from their past catalog. Regardless, I felt compelled to still include.
Vik Shirley - Some Deer [2024]
Barton Smock - Angel Tantrum / Tell 5pm it's God Somewhere [2025]
Heather Christle - Paper Crown [2025]
Mike Nagel - Culdesac [2024]
Sarah J. Sloat - Classic Crimes [2025]
Victoria Chang - With My Back to the World [2024]
Evan Nicholls - Easy Tiger [2025]
Mary Ruefle - The Book [2023]
David Gregory Welch - The Book of Echoes [2025]
Shane Kowalski - Are People Out There [2025]
Richard Siken - I Do Know Some Things [2025]
GennaRose Nethercott - Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart [2024]
Jose Hernandez Diaz - The Parachutist [2025]
C. Dylan Bassett - Lake Story [2014]
Amelia Gray - Threats [2012]
Shivani Mehta - The Required Assembly [2025]
Bob Heman - A Sky Obscured by Bicycles [2025]
Paul Cunningham - Sociocide at the 24/7 [2025]
Michael Bazzett - Cloudwatcher [2026]
Noah Falck & Matt McBride - Prerecorded Weather [2022]
Fiston Mwanza Mujila - The Slaughterhouse of Dreams [2025]
Percival Everett - God’s Country [1994]
Edward Mullany - Whiskey for the Holy Ghost [2025]
Re-reads
It’s worth including the select few repeat reads from this year. Some are long-standing favorites, one was a re-read for research, some were travel / beach reads, and some are continued comfort zones for me.
Collin Callahan - Thunderbird Inn [2022]
A.T. Grant - Collected Alex [2013]
Jennifer L Knox - Days of Shame and Failure [2015]
Zan de Parry - Cold Dogs [2024]
Juan Pablo Villalobos - Down the Rabbit Hole [2010]
John Maradik - Surprises and Pleasures [2023]
