This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from Gastromythology by Jessica Manack (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024).
That Kind of Night
It was the kind of night when I plopped down on the curb and threw up on my shoes. It was the kind of light that made everything seem like a movie set. The kind of town where you navigated by the Cathedral. No one knew what “suburb” meant—it was that kind of country. Theirs was the kind of shade that never claimed to cool. Theirs was the kind of antique air
that tasted centuries old. It was the kind of wine that did you in. They were the kind of people who appraised us with their eyes. You were the kind of drunk whose friends refused to walk on the same side of the street. I claimed you and your stupid grin. You were the kind of towhead American who couldn’t disguise yourself. I was that kind of American too. I shouldn’t talk.
It was the kind of fun that was desperate, an oblivion. Ours were the kind of thirsting mouths that never said no. These were the kind of nights with blurry ends. The kind of gay bars that were hard to find and called “Don’t Tell Anyone.” You were the kind of guy whose motto was “Let’s go.” I was the kind of girl who never paused with her “OK.”
Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in Pittsburgh, where she serves on the editorial teams of Belt Magazine and thePittsburgh Review of Books and as poetry reader for TriQuarterly. Her recent work explores her family of origin, the melting pot of America in general and northern Appalachia in particular, and the challenges and joys of girlhood, womanhood and motherhood. Her writing has appeared widely in anthologies and journals, and her poetry collection Gastromythology was published in 2024 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, as the winner of their First Chapbook Contest.
Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from Gastromythology by Jessica Manack (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024).
Where
There, in the library. Free to the people. In the field outside the chapel. In the chapel. At the pulpit, whatever they call it. These places other people built for other people: we made them ours. Outside the cemetery, where no one complained. Outside the stable, where no one was disgusted. On the city bus, anonymous. In the parts of my body I had just learned to cover up. There, hungover, over eggs. Our houses might as well have been façades. We broke out at dusk, broke into song on the sidewalk. No, we’re all out of snacks! No, you can’t use the bathroom! I was named after an actress. You were named after a flower. And there, in the underpass that’s always flooded, we joined our puzzle-piece teeth. We ignored the graffiti. There, on the Greyhound bus, I braved New England to find you. In the listening room, you played me Phil Ochs for the first time, dropped the needle like a professional. There, but for fortune. The death heavy in his voice. We chose life over and over. We chose to sink into each other.
Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in Pittsburgh, where she serves on the editorial teams of Belt Magazine and thePittsburgh Review of Books and as poetry reader for TriQuarterly. Her recent work explores her family of origin, the melting pot of America in general and northern Appalachia in particular, and the challenges and joys of girlhood, womanhood and motherhood. Her writing has appeared widely in anthologies and journals, and her poetry collection Gastromythology was published in 2024 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, as the winner of their First Chapbook Contest.
Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from Gastromythology by Jessica Manack (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024).
Gastromythology
The day after you leave, I realize that I am starving, and that I am in the place for it. Stopping at each stand on the street, I buy cones of almonds saltier than the sea, steal enough hazelnut paste to last a week, hide bananas like disease up my shirtsleeves. I cry in cafeterias, clean cups with my tongue, trying each tea—Black Forest, Dreams of Rilke—without luck. None of these are what my mouth wants to be full of. I’m displaced: a flopping fish, dismembered hand, in a land where words lay like traps in the way. The people here greet friends with Hey, Uncle. They say: I have the head of three in the afternoon and Your girlfriend is gorgeous; she is like a train. The last time you went away was the day I learned the vigor of cheese, all kinds. The sly, pillow-softs, the ink-blue clots, the ones with waxy rinds: I made them mine, storing in oil for next time what I didn’t eat. Now, I hang out beside the bakery, drinking yogurt, grinding fried corn between my teeth, until fresh bread drops down the chute into the window. I eat it as I walk. It lasts a block. At the candy stand by my house, the old man studies me as though I am a lush, tired eyes pink as Valentines. “For the kids,” I lie. You’re always on the go. You don’t send notes, or cards, or steaks at Christmastime. I try to gild goodbyes, frost them pink and sweet like cakes, but I can’t hide my eyes. I seek you in every pie. I eat the promises you break with ham on rye. Flailing, I try to write you, but “You’re so shellfish!” is all I manage. I eat my dinners in bars, anonymous. It feels safe. Tonight, the rotund widow brings plate after plate—fried bread soup, cauliflower drowned in mayonnaise, eggs splayed atop mountains of squash and rice, a plateful of red tuna packed in oil, veins black, an ore. Hefting her rolls while fetching me more, ignorant of my binges, she encourages me to eat. “The eyes of the fat are brilliant,” she laughs. “The eyes of the thin, they pop out like frozen fish.” The light falling away’s all that punctuates my days. My feeding’s never complete. I pry orange blossoms from the trees lining the streets, shower my mouth with flowers tasty as phone books. Nothing is as filling as it looks. Even the fruits on the trees are useless, used by junkies, they say, to sterilize needles—a few acidic pricks to safety. I roll one in my hand, marvel at its slick citrus skin, teeth mossy, hands soiled and clammed. It doesn’t let on, but I know we’re both damned, we’re both shoved, bodies tested and bruised, flesh shot through with poison mistaken for love.
Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in Pittsburgh, where she serves on the editorial teams of Belt Magazine and thePittsburgh Review of Books and as poetry reader for TriQuarterly. Her recent work explores her family of origin, the melting pot of America in general and northern Appalachia in particular, and the challenges and joys of girlhood, womanhood and motherhood. Her writing has appeared widely in anthologies and journals, and her poetry collection Gastromythology was published in 2024 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, as the winner of their First Chapbook Contest.
Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.
Aiyana Masla wrote her first full-length poetry collection, The Underdream (Conerstone Press, 2025), during and after her struggle with Tuberculosis, to which she almost lost her life. The Underdream is a precious celebration of the sort of triumph that settles into the bones, that is punctuated by lines like “I have to taste the ocean again, I still have to do/big more generous with joy”( Masla 26). And while The Underdream is a book of struggle, it is not a battle cry, it is not boastful.
The Underdream is a recommitment to a life, a life of miracles, such as “oranges in February…dipping my fingers into fleeting/ethereal honey” (Masla 27). Masla writes toward this dedication through quiet revelation and vivid imagery. In “Dew & Dirt” Masla writes,
“Every morning, so far, I am alive.
Every morning, as if out of a thicket
or fog, the world returns, slowly seeping;
wets my skin with color. Life rushes in.” (Masla 49)
Here, Masla invokes life, a life of bounty, and communion with loved ones, of time that is not measured with an unrelenting hand. Her poems often unfurl like spells with repeated lines: “I am not ready,” “I will not,” “I want one more” (Masla 26). She invokes a life heavy with fruit, flower, longing, and color; “marigold,” “husky purple,” “yellow shimmer,” “winded pink,” “spring cream lavendered” and “persimmon yawn” (Masla 19, 18, 33, 38, 64). Though what she speaks of is ordinary, the language she uses to conjure everyday color, the beauty of being with ones you love, of wishing for a body that is healthy and whole, drips with juice, with flower, with the glitter and grit of desire, giving each poem a sheen of mysticism and magic.
The Underdream is a book of quiet holiness, of soft glory, of embodied worship. Aiyana Masla moves into a place familial and liminal, touched by dream, honeyed by grief. Broken into three sections: Night, Between Rooms, and Thaw, The Underdream moves between hospital rooms and gardens. Masla takes her time in each place, her eyes trained to see the almost infinitesimal as valuable and worth noticing. In “Savored” she writes:
“Two blinking stars, tiny petals
small fires in the blackness
your toes, cold
your breath, butter in your mouth
the blossom, now crushed in your pocket
salty, a pollen stain you couldn’t see,
but smelt. Small ceremony
you almost didn’t stop for.” (Masla 19)
Masla’s book is full of such “small ceremonies,” the measuring of precious ritual, and reminds us of the art of living a life of careful attention and awe. In “Savored,” she writes of pulling over near an empty soccer field, the “pink day fading.” And it is in this simple moment of stillness that a ceremony of noticing occurs, a moment is transformed and marked, stained by pollen, and is made memorable.
Masla deftly weaves jubilation and desolation. She names this emotion, “griefjoy,” in her poem, “Letter from my Lungs to My Legs” (Masla 28). She writes of “panging, irridescient,” the pain of sirens and needles, yet ends with a wish to be “winged and whole…To concave the sky into clean sound fingerprints of sleep” (Masla 28, 29). With her, we too, move through pain, through joy, through ecstasy, into clean air, to breathe and to sleep.
It is rare to find a book so complete in spirit, of prayer, and spell, and yet so grounded in the physical. Much of the movement of the book is of the sort done from a bed, or in a state of dreaming, lying in the tall grasses, or on a blanket, “half-asleep under a purple sweater” (Masla 13). Masla writes:
“I don’t want to brush. Let me tell you
about stretching out, then, into the fresh, fragrant
after driving and dangling my fingers
through an almost warm wind. The open window,
as if summer —as if not sick—as if almost carefree.” (Masla 13)
One is reminded that this is a book of convalescence, and the title itself, The Underdream, implies both spirit and earth, how dreams can lie with us, that they are not just lofty things, but that which stays with us in the bed, that which follows us into both “soil and sky” (Masla 58).
At the end of The Underdream, in “Returned,” Masla states,
“Hey,
I can learn
imperfect holiness.
I can learn this
dappled afternoon.” (Masla 66)
And longer after reading the book, we find our afternoons more dappled with sunlight. At the end, I couldn’t help but repeat Masla’s last lines out loud, “I have never been / so thankful” (Masla, 66 ). The Underdream is a collection of poetry of light that lingers, a book of afterglow.
Hannah Yerington is the author of the chapbook Sheologies, published by Minerva Rising Press in 2023. Her first full-length poetry collection, Garlic Moon, is forthcoming with Monkfish Book in Fall 2026/Winter 2027. Some of her awards and recognitions include being a finalist for The Peseroff Prize, one of the winners of the 2024 Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest, and a winner of the Minerva Rising Dare to Be Chapbook Contest. She is the director of The Bolinas Poetry Camp for Girls and received an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University. Her work can be found inLilith, Porkbelly Press, Prism, Room Magazine, Half Mystic Press, Hey Alma, andCascadia Daily News. She writes about Jewish magic, teenage prophet babes, and plant ancestors. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her imp puppy, Poe, her priestess kitten, Tala, and her warrior-chef husband, Kris. Find her on Instagram @hannahyerington.
Last September, I finally bought a new bookcase: white, the kind you buy from IKEA and assemble in twenty minutes. The promise of organization was a refreshing change to the lugging of books across continents every time I traveled to Bristol and back.
For years before university, across childhood and through my teenage years, I had organized my books on the wooden shelves above my desk. I had started with one shelf, stacking some of The Magic Tree House books, lone copies from A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Matilda. There were other books too, like Tell Me When? whose content I still vividly remember, especially the page about the invention of paper, and another book about space that my brother had gifted me.
There were other books, somewhere, split between my desk and a smaller unit my family used for our printer. It wasn’t until I was a teen that I began to become more curatorial.
I vividly remember reading The Book Thief for a book report assignment in eighth grade. Death as a narrator was unusual, interesting, but also a little disconcerting. I read Little Women for the first time the same year and became obsessed with it. I’ve gone back to it time and time again since then, as a girl, then as a young woman, the book transforming as my perspective did.
With the literary world’s dystopian and sci-fi phase, my shelves also housed books like Divergent, Delirium, Replica, and Carve the Mark. Before that was the Nicholas Sparks phase (which I blame on my sister—I first borrowed The Last Song from her) with books like Safe Haven, Two by Two, and At First Sight.
Occasionally, a nonfiction or literary fiction book, like The Art of War for Women or Men Without Women, would nestle itself among the rest.
What I became certain of, however, was that throughout my life, the right books seemed to find me at the right time. Or maybe I sought them out subconsciously. It was hard to say, but just like I had read Divergent at a time when I needed a push of courage, my first dive into fantasy books in years was during the initial months of Covid. Unable to leave the house and terrified the virus would steal my first year of university as it had my high school graduation, I found the perfect escape in fantasy worlds.
My shelf welcomed Six of Crows, The Folk of the Air, Shatter Me, Sorcery of Thorns, An Enchantment of Ravens, and many more. I was on the brink of starting my degree at a really chaotic time, and my reading, though mostly an escape and a way of improving my writing, later proved useful to my understanding of YA fiction and my interest in the wider age-genre from a publishing perspective.
Now that I have more shelf-space, I’ve been adding more books to both my collection and my TBR list. Among my recent reads are Babel and Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell (my new all-time favorite—brilliant in every way!), and several short stories from The Best American Short Stories 2021 (special shoutout to “Clementine, Carmelita, Dog” by David Means).
Up next on the TBR list are Hamnet, The Poppy War, We Hunt the Flame, The Davenports (which I bought along with The Marriage Portrait and several other books at the latest Jeddah Book Fair), The Da Vinci Code, and An Ember in the Ashes.
So, if you need me, you’ll probably find me lost between the pages!
Tassneem Abdulwahab (she/her) is an aspiring writer and editor with a BA (Hons) Creative and Professional Writing from UWE Bristol. With a strong interest in culture, history, and psychology and a love for fiction, her writing often draws on one or more of these threads to tell character-centric stories. Trained in oil painting, she recently exhibited and sold two portrait paintings in February 2025. In her free time, you can find her buying more books (no, seriously—she owns three editions of Little Women), snapping pictures of the little details, or sitting at her easel!
Every year on my birthday, I write a letter to my future self. The tradition started when I was eight – I remember curling up under the heat of my hand-me-down Dell laptop in a windowseat, and determinedly introducing myself to 9-year-old Catie. I write these letters to dream, and to remember. I share my hopes for the upcoming year, and my triumphs and regrets from the receding one. Reading these letters feel like tossing of a baton across time, self to transitive self.
This example comes as close as I think I can get to a thesis for “why” I write. My letters blur the barriers between the struggles of my past and those of my present; much of my poetry is a similar act of reaching across time, in search of companionship. I also think these are the stories that I am most drawn to engage in this kind of timelessness, and embrace the non-linearity of the human experience. Every self who has written those letters sits at a computer, typing away in some corner of the universe, just as every author bemoans their writer’s block somewhere in our space-time continuum. As usual, I think James Baldwin summed it up best: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
There have been times in my life when I naively thought that nobody could fully understand the way I felt. Sometimes, a journal entry from several years back proves me wrong, and reminds me of my own resilience, reminds me that whatever insurmountable thing I’m facing, I have gotten through before. More often, though, I read a poem that encapsulates a feeling I thought couldn’t even be put into words. One of my favorite poems of all time, by the late, great Louise Glück, contains the lines “Whatever/returns from oblivion returns/ to find a voice”. I think reading, and writing, is me trying to find my voice—either in this timeline, or another.
It probably seems hippie-dippie, but in exceptionally happy or sad moments, I sometimes close my eyes and picture reaching my hand out to another self. I try to share my joy with another version of myself who is grieving, and I exchange my sorrow with a Catie who has stability to spare. I like to think of writing as another manifestation of this metaphorical hand—authors across time reaching out to ask Do you see me? Can you feel this, as I feel it and put it down in ink?
Needless to say, much of my favorite writing revolves around the idea of change and transformation – striving for a new future while retaining some kind of connection and tenderness to a past self. This is why I’m so passionate about Sundress’ mission to spotlight trans poetic voices. Trans people struggle with this tension and ceaseless tether between the old self and the new, and navigate it with more depth and gracefulness than most anyone else. I am inspired daily by the excellence and profound insight of these poets, and it is an honor to work with their holy words as an intern here at Sundress.
I’ll close the same way I closed my most recent letter, saying goodbye to my 21-year-old self and greeting my 22-year-old one:
“I hope I keep loving, and healing, and bouncing back. There are glimmers of such light. I wish I could send some back to the author of my last letter. And I hope I get some, on my bad days, from future selves who share my planetary place in the sky.”
Catie Macauley (they/he/she) is a transmasculine aspiring poet living and working in Boston. They study Sociology, Environmental Studies, and English at Wellesley College, where they also compete on the Wellesley Whiptails frisbee team and perform with the Wellesley Shakespeare Society. A Best of the Net 2024 Nominee, his writing has appeared in brawl lit, The Wellesley News, and the Young Writer’s Project, among other publications. In their free time, Catie enjoys boxing, re-reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and buying far too many books at independent bookstores – primarily the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, where they are somehow lucky enough to work.
backed with silk that is wet, that is dark, that is stained or snagged, its ribbon-edge
singed. If she weren’t spilled gold what would we see. If she weren’t
burned or strewn or gilt. If she weren’t
closed to us as though reachable only as the story.
Ready to sleep. I fell for women because I could read.
Because women were sleeping and I wasn’t, because women were speaking
and I wasn’t, because stories were telling to me. I fell for what they gathered
and kept gathering. I believed.
Rae Gouirand is also the author of two collections of poetry, Glass is Glass Water is Water (2018) and Open Winter (winner of the Bellday Prize, 2011), the chapbooks Rough Sequence (winner of the Keystone Chapbook Award, 2023), Little Hour (winner of the Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest, 2022), Jinx (winner of the Summer Kitchen Competition, 2019), and Must Apple (winner of the Oro Fino Competition, 2018), and a short work of nonfiction, The History of Art (winner of The Atlas Review’s Open Reading Competition, 2019). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bateau, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Foglifter, The Iowa Review, jubilat, The Kenyon Review, the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Michigan Quarterly Review, [PANK], Quarterly West, The Rumpus, Spinning Jenny, Under a Warm Green Linden, VOLT, ZYZZYVA, two volumes of the Best New Poets series, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation, Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, and many other journals and anthologies nationwide. She leads several longrunning independent workshops in northern California and online, including the cross-genre workshop Scribe Lab, and lectures in the Department of English at the University of California-Davis.
Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from The Velvet Book by Rae Gouirand (Cornerstone Press, 2024).
The Velvet Book
Texture draw us back into one place.
Draw the autumn its certain pictures, ones that establish
what to solve for want. The landscape spectral behind us.
It reduces. Step into it, acquire that drape.
Fascinate. Become subject.
To be subject is to disrupt, to injure the tender onlooker.
Good luck getting past the center of the shot. It baits you
neither flame nor extinguishing.
You call the surface mine as it digs deeper the well sounding
mine mine mine. As though consenting.
Velvet give me sonorousness. Leave me rung. Beyond amorous.
I’ll travel the longing until it becomes the dress.
Rae Gouirand is also the author of two collections of poetry, Glass is Glass Water is Water (2018) and Open Winter (winner of the Bellday Prize, 2011), the chapbooks Rough Sequence (winner of the Keystone Chapbook Award, 2023), Little Hour (winner of the Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest, 2022), Jinx (winner of the Summer Kitchen Competition, 2019), and Must Apple (winner of the Oro Fino Competition, 2018), and a short work of nonfiction, The History of Art (winner of The Atlas Review’s Open Reading Competition, 2019). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bateau, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Foglifter, The Iowa Review, jubilat, The Kenyon Review, the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Michigan Quarterly Review, [PANK], Quarterly West, The Rumpus, Spinning Jenny, Under a Warm Green Linden, VOLT, ZYZZYVA, two volumes of the Best New Poets series, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation, Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, and many other journals and anthologies nationwide. She leads several longrunning independent workshops in northern California and online, including the cross-genre workshop Scribe Lab, and lectures in the Department of English at the University of California-Davis.
Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Shira Haus, is from The Velvet Book by Rae Gouirand (Cornerstone Press, 2024).
The Velvet Book
Velvet was someone saying yes, the room beyond this door, the space
between your ribs, where between rib and rib darkness holds itself
compact as a line pressed from the white. Velvet was the heaving, always
closing what could not stay open: we were supposed to die out. / You had your face
pressed up against the coarse dyed velvet / Of the curtain, always looking out for your own
transmigration: / What colors you would wear, what cut of jewel posed the one whose lines
my hands horizoned. So many kinds of pages.
Rae Gouirand is also the author of two collections of poetry, Glass is Glass Water is Water (2018) and Open Winter (winner of the Bellday Prize, 2011), the chapbooks Rough Sequence (winner of the Keystone Chapbook Award, 2023), Little Hour (winner of the Swan Scythe Chapbook Contest, 2022), Jinx (winner of the Summer Kitchen Competition, 2019), and Must Apple (winner of the Oro Fino Competition, 2018), and a short work of nonfiction, The History of Art (winner of The Atlas Review’s Open Reading Competition, 2019). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Bateau, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Foglifter, The Iowa Review, jubilat, The Kenyon Review, the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Michigan Quarterly Review, [PANK], Quarterly West, The Rumpus, Spinning Jenny, Under a Warm Green Linden, VOLT, ZYZZYVA, two volumes of the Best New Poets series, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation, Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology, and many other journals and anthologies nationwide. She leads several longrunning independent workshops in northern California and online, including the cross-genre workshop Scribe Lab, and lectures in the Department of English at the University of California-Davis.
Shira Leah Haus (she/her) is a queer, antizionist Jewish writer from Michigan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and wildness, among others. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and placed third in the 2024 Pinch Literary Awards for poetry.
I can’t fit all the books in my personal collection in one photograph. Some of them are stacked in my television console while others are on my counter, and the majority are shoved onto two bookcases: a larger one downstairs, carefully organized into genre, and another in my bedroom that I’ve dubbed “The Romance Shelf” for all my favorite romance and Young Adult novels.
Even with all these books scattered around my apartment, I still have another full bookshelf in my childhood bedroom in Texas, filled to the brim with all the books I couldn’t afford to house here in Tennessee once I moved for college. And once a book becomes mine, it’s hard for me to let go. While most readers are incredibly careful with their books, trying their best to keep them pristine, I view the imperfections on my books as a badge of honor. Almost all of them have signs of love, even if they’ve barely been touched. To me, the wear and tear of a book can show you how much it means to its owner (as seen by the tear stains inside several of of my favorites).
Many people would hear that information and assume that I’m incredibly well-read. While that is correct in some aspects, there’s a lot more to the story. In truth, I love to collect books. There’s nothing quite like the rush of going into a bookstore, whether it be a Barnes and Noble or a well-used thrift books establishment, and finding a title that you want to dive into. The issue for me is that I can never say no. So, the book ends up coming home with me to collect dust on a shelf until I find the energy to pick it up.
As a mood reader, I find it very difficult to stick to a pre-planned “To Be Read.” To choose a book to read, I have to ponder on what I’m currently feeling, what I want to feel, and how much is going on in my life. However strange this may be, I have noticed that waiting to read a book you’ve been anticipating adds an incredible amount to the experience. In fact, most of my favorite novels are ones that I put off reading for months or years. So, this list of novels on my shelf falls in that category. Each of these are books that I had been wanting to read before I actually picked them up, whether by force through classwork or my own volition. Now, they sit on my shelf with pride, and I am all the better for the knowledge they’ve brought me.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
I anticipated this book for a year before I read it. The first time I had heard of it, I was a junior in high school, and I watched as the seniors filed into my AP Environmental Sciences class with tears on their faces. When I asked what was wrong, they just shook their heads. Later, I would learn that each of them had just finished reading The Kite Runner in Mrs. Bing’s AP Literature and Composition class, which I knew I would be taking next year. Fast forward a year later, and the book was already sitting on my shelf, begging to be cracked open. Throughout the course of reading this novel, I shed several tears and felt things I didn’t know books could make me feel. For the first time, I felt like the class discussions I was having with my peers meant something important, and I knew they all felt it as well. To me, this book is a beginning. It started my love of literary analysis and discussion, my craving for knowledge about worlds outside of my own, and made me wonder if I could ever be as good of a teacher as Mrs. Bing was one day (still to be seen!). Even more, it was a revelation that opened my eyes to the world around me and changed the way I viewed the world.
The Kite Runner perfectly blends themes of friendship, family, and political conflict, highlighting the effects of the Afghan conflict on Amir, our main character. More so, it tackles the ideas of forgiveness and atonement, painting a beautiful picture that allows readers to both understand and identify with Amir. Plus, the novel’s rich descriptions of Afghan culture, both in Afghanistan and as refugees in America, are absolutely amazing. I truly recommend this book to everyone, no matter who you are!
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
This one is a little more embarrassing. When I was in middle school, I was obsessed with Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices trilogy. In the trilogy, two of the main characters bond over their love of Dickens, particularly A Tale of Two Cities, and constantly make references while using themselves as metaphors for the characters in the novel. I begged my mom to take me to the mall, where I bought a Barnes and Noble Classics edition of the novel. But the moment I cracked it open, I couldn’t read it. For years, I tried to get past the first few pages, but I could never understand what exactly Dickens was trying to say. It felt too profound, so I gave up, resolving to read it eventually, whenever that may be. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I walked into Dr. Nancy Henry’s 19th Century British Literature course at the University of Tennessee and saw A Tale of Two Cities on the syllabus! Reading it as an adult and finally understanding those small references that I wanted to know so desperately as a child healed me, but it also opened my mind up to a world of new history and literature. Once again, I felt connection with my peers through class discussion, and I firmly believe those discussions and interactions are the reason it is cemented as my favorite classical novel. Well, other than the fact that I cry every time I read the last few paragraphs!
Before reading this book, I didn’t know much about the French Revolution. However, Dickens’ use of imagery and metaphor, especially in the scenes with Madame Defarge, are insightful into the conflict itself. Each character is so lovable in their own ways, even the “bad” ones! They make you root for them and sympathize with them, and by the end of the novel, I was fully invested into each and every one of them. I never wanted it to end!
The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
I felt the opposite of anticipation before reading this book. I had only ever heard of it in spaces that praised incredibly complex fantasy, and quite frankly, I never thought I would get into it. Knowing that a third of the book is in second person point-of-view intrigued me, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt too intimidated to actually purchase it. Imagine my surprise when I saw the syllabus for my Science Fiction and Fantasy class in college, and The Fifth Season was the second to last book on the list! I was told by my professor, Dr. Amy Elias, that it was one of the best books she had ever read, but I couldn’t get rid of the dread lingering in my stomach leading up to the moment I cracked open the novel. But from the moment I read the first page, I was hooked. Each line brought more questions that I needed answered, and the only way to get them was to continue reading. By the end of the novel, I was left with even more, yet I was still completely satisfied with everything I’d read.
It’s difficult for me to talk about how much I love this book without spoiling it, so I’ll be brief. Jemisin does something so beautiful with her writing, and each point of view is so rich and vibrant. The way she tackles oppression and family throughout the entire series is masterfully done, and although it is confusing at times, I have never felt more satisfied by learning the answers I’d been longing to know by the end. Even better is the worldbuilding and intricate magic system, using the earth and magic in a way I’ve never read before. For those who love fantasy and are looking for something new, this is my number one recommendation!
Turtles All The Way Down by John Green
When I was younger, I was an avid fan of John Green. Like most people my age, The Fault In Our Stars was one of my first heartbreaks caused by a book, and I read the rest of his repertoire rather quickly. When Turtles All The Way Down was finally published, though, I had moved on to other things. I had always wanted to read it, but I never had the chance. In fact, I was told not to read it. Because I am someone who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) like the novel’s main character, several people told me that reading it would do nothing but trigger a mental spiral. However, that made me want to read it more to see if its depiction of OCD was realistic.
This book did trigger a mental spiral for me, but I think that shows how good of job Green did with his depiction of OCD. I found myself relating to every sentence and every thought. Although it is easier for me to control my obsessive-compulsive thoughts than Aza, I could complete understand the way her mind works, as it is the same as mine. It almost scared me to see my own thought processes reflected in a novel not written by me. I truly would recommend this book to anyone who knows someone with OCD or obsessive-compulsive tendencies. It will make you understand them and their brain a lot more!
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
I first learned about Malcolm X in high school, but he was characterized as “the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr.” My peers and I were told that he had more “radical” ideas and that he supported the use of violence during the Civil Rights Movement. Immediately, I was intrigued to learn more about him, but I was never a big fan of autobiographies. Once again, I was gifted the pleasure of reading this novel through a class syllabus, for Dr. Urmila Seshagiri’s memoir course. Opening those pages and reading their contents was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I had to come to terms with a lot of information that made me feel sad, uncomfortable, and downright angry, but it helped me gain a new perspective into this integral part of American history. I am so grateful for the chance to glimpse into Malcolm X’s mind, and I feel that it helped me understand so much more about the Black experience in America, both in the past and today.
The thing that shocked me the most about this novel is how much of Malcolm X has been erased or dimmed in current American history classes. It spans all the way up to X’s assassination, and Alex Haley chronicles some of the time afterwards. Through the entire memoir, one thing is obvious: Malcolm X wasn’t a man that craved violence, he was a man that craved change and autonomy. Because of the gross mischaracterization that mainstream society places on X, I believe every American should read this memoir.
The Poppy War by RF Kuang
I had this book endlessly recommended to me before I read it. Everyone told me it was one of the best fantasy books ever written while also warning me about its dark nature. “This isn’t what you normally think when you think of fantasy,” they said. “It’s hard to read at times, but it’s worth it.” Eventually, I bought it, and like several other books, it sat on my shelf collecting dust for a few years. It wasn’t until a very close friend of mine sat on my couch and finished the third book in the trilogy with tears streaming down her face that I knew I needed to pick it up immediately. Turns out, everyone was right. Immediately upon finishing it, after I had already cried three times, I knew that this book had dethroned another and taken the spot of my Favorite Book.
Much of this novel is heavily inspired by Chinese history, the Sino-Japanese War, and acts of genocide. As the main character, Rin, learns more about the world around her, she becomes entangled with the empire’s gods, realizing that the line between the spiritual and physical world is thinner than she previously believed. When war comes to Nikan, she is forced to throw herself into battle at the cost of her own mind and sanity. I feel like Kuang perfectly uses history and mythology together to create a story centered around incredibly complex characters. Truly, her writing perfectly blends plot with character in a way that I’ve never seen before. I felt like reading it helped me understand what I want to accomplish in my own fantasy novel, and I believe it made me a better writer. I want everyone under the sun to read this book!
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston
Casey McQuiston is an author I’ve loved for a long time. Red, White, & Royal Blue and One Last Stop were both five star reads for me, and I consistently reread them when I want to feel something again. Their novels center around some of the most beautiful and difficult parts of queerness, and I’ve always appreciated their ability to make me laugh and cry two pages apart. The Pairing was a novel I had been looking to read since its publication, but I wasn’t able to get to it until a month ago. However, I was shocked (in a good way) by how different this novel was compared to McQuiston’s others.
I enjoyed every part of this book. The writing made me feel like I was truly traveling across Europe with Kit and Theo, and the different foods and wines they tried made me desperate to take my own trip across the sea. Queer culture is littered throughout its pages, and Theo’s gender identity struggles in learning they are nonbinary were included in such a natural, raw, and beautiful way. However, the main reason I am including this book is because it changed and reframed my perception of love. Kit and Theo are exactly what I believe love should be— they see every single part of each other, including their flaws, and love each other because of them rather than in spite of them. The way that Theo and Kit talk about each other in this book is magical, poetic, and realistic all at once, and I feel that everyone should aspire to find this kind of love. If you want to read the happiest ending, pick this one up immediately!
Shelby Hansen (she/her) is a creative writer and self-proclaimed fantasy maestro hailing from the northern plains of Texas. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee’s English program with a focus in Literature and Creative Writing, where she won several awards for her fiction. Her writing often focuses on womanhood, identity, and the reclamation of the self. This is reflected in her debut novel, which she hopes to publish soon. When she is not writing or teaching today’s youth, she enjoys reading, crocheting, swimming, and spending time with her two cats, Stella and Gemma.
