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 Alter (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 Hum (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)

 

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 Swenson (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 Beilen

There is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out by Madeline McDonnell

I Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time by Kristin Prevallet

Ordinary Girls by Jaqueria 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 Sam 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

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I WANT TO START BY SAYING: An Interview with Samuel Ace