2024: A Year in Reading
What a year it’s been. There is, perhaps, no better escape from the humdrum hustle and bustle than a good book. So, the staff at the CSU Poetry Center has put together a list of our favorite books from the past year of reading so that we may further the tradition of escapism. We wish you all safe holidays and a happy new year! —Ari Croft
Caryl Pagel, Director
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s Negative Money (Soft Skull)
Nicholas Gulig’s The Other Altar (Center for Literary Publishing)
Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (Black Cat/Grove)
Sally Keith’s River House (Milkweed)
Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (Oxford University Press)
Matthew Mabis’s Letters to Matt LaFleur (heron press)
Iman Mersal’s Traces of Enayat (And Other Stories)
Alyssa Perry’s Oily Doily (Bench Editions)
Xan Forest Phillips’s Hull (Nightboat)
Margaret Ross’s Saturday (The Song Cave)
Zach Savich’s Momently (Black Ocean)
Eric Wallgren’s Icewalker and Dirtworm (Community Mausoleum)
Hilary Plum, Associate Director
Here are some books I was very grateful to read this year (published in all different years) and am excited to recommend. I’ll exclude books I worked on as editor since I’ve already thus recommended them; I’ll exclude books I reread this year since I’ve probably recommended them before; I’ll wait on manuscripts I read until they’re books you can also go find. So those are the rules. And here are some beauties, some lifechangers (order is random):
Missing Persons: Or, My Grandmother’s Secrets by Claire Wills (essay/memoir)
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas (novel)
Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch (novel)
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (novel)
Alt-Nature by Saretta Morgan (poetry)
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall (nonfiction)
Momently by Zach Savich (poetry)
Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America by Shefali Luthra (nonfiction)
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder (nonfiction)
Know My Name by Chanel Miller (memoir)
Happening by Annie Ernaux, trans. Tanya Leslie (memoir is probably right)
You Made Me Love You: Selected Stories, 1981–2018 by John Edgar Wideman (stories)
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan (novel)
Oily Doily by Alyssa Perry (poetry)
I also read a heap of crime fiction, highlights include Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, Henning Mankell’s The Troubled Man, trans. Laurie Thompson (beware, this one is sad), Laura Lippman’s Prom Mom, Tana French’s The Hunter, Val McDermid’s Past Lying, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, The Legacy, trans. Victoria Cobb, and some nice ones by Deborah Crombie.
Zach Peckham, Managing Editor
Some books I loved this year, not all from this year:
A Ten Peso Burial For Which Truth I Sign, Gabriel Palacios (Fonograf Editions)
And The Word, Cid Corman (Coffee House Press)
Awe, Mac Wellman (Ugly Duckling Presse)
Death Styles, Joyelle McSweeney (Nightboat Books)
Documentary Poetry, Heimrad Bäcker, transl. Patrick Greaney (Winter Editions)
Information Desk, Robyn Schiff (Penguin Poets)
Momently, Zach Savich (Black Ocean)
Nearly Early Artly Never, Kelly Clare (Greying Ghost Press)
No Measure, Kelly Krumrie (Calamari Archive)
Of, Kai Ihns (The Elephants)
Oily Doily, Alyssa Perry (Bench Editions)
Paradise HD, Isabel Boutiette (Spiral Editions)
Poetry’s Geographies, ed. Katherine M. Hedeen & Zoë Skoulding (Eulalia Books)
Retribution Forthcoming, Katie Berta (Ohio U Press)
Such Rich Hour, Cole Swensen (U Iowa Press)
The Kármán Line, Daisy Atterbury (Rescue Press)
The Poems of Marianne Moore, ed. Grace Schulman (Viking)
Trilogy, H. D. (New Directions)
Soft Water, John Coletti (Spiral Editions)
Slow Violence, Katherine Duckworth (Beautiful Days Press)
Joey Rooney, Editorial Assistant
Poetry
Green Knife by Stella Corso (Rescue Press)
Like an Olive by Tirzah Goldenberg (Verge Books)
Momently by Zach Savich (Black Ocean)
Soliloquy with the Ghosts in Nile by Hussain Ahmed (Black Ocean)
Death Styles by Joyelle McSweeney (Nightboat Books)
Fiction
Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson (Penguin)
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)
The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald (New Directions)
Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen (St. Martin's Press)
The Last Man by Mary Shelley (Norton)
Nonfiction
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans (Penguin)
The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings by Geoff Dyer (Picador Paper)
Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (Oxford UP)
The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin (Belknap Press; an in-progress read)
Windower by Michael Loughran (forthcoming from CSU Poetry Center—I'm cheating, I know!)
Kristen Tetzmann, Editorial Assistant
I want to start by saying by Samuel Ace
No One Knows Their Blood Type by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat trans. by Hazem Jamjoum
Oily Doily by Alyssa Perry
The Iliac Crest by Cristina River Garza trans. by Sarah Booker
How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences by Sue William Silverman
Icewalker & Dirtworm by Eric Wallgren
Revenge of the Scapegoat by Caren Beilin
There is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out by Madeline McDonnell
I Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time by Kristin Prevallet
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz
Consent: A Memoir by Jill Ciment
Games and Rituals by Katherine Heiny
Imagine a Death by Janice Lee
Momently by Zach Savich
Voice of the Fish: A Lyric Essay by Lars Horn
Death Styles by Joyelle McSweeney
Far Away by Caryl Churchill
The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Information Desk: An Epic by Robyn Schiff
Green Knife by Stella Corso
(Windower by Michael Loughran and Reel by Colleen O'Brien)
Ari Croft, Editorial Assistant
Oily Doily by Alyssa Perry
Information Desk: An Epic by Robyn Schiff
I Want to Start by Saying by Samuel Ace
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (I really love Jane Austen)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Crush by Richard Siken
Xan Forest Phillips, Anisfield-Wolf Fellow
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
What About This: Collected Poems of Frank Stanford by Frank Stanford
The Employees by Olga Ravn
Punks by John Keene
Angel Interrupted by Reginald Shepherd