Sara’s 2022 Recommended Reading List

Introduction:

This year, I didn’t read a lot of novels. I mostly read short stories and poems, some novelettes, and some nonfiction, all encountered sporadically throughout the year. As always, the amount of amazing work out each year is inspiring and astounding, and this list cannot begin to cover it all. I don’t keep a regular magazine reading schedule, so these works are not selected out of a more regimented reading practice, and this list does skew heavily toward what is freely available to read online.

This list draws from everything I’ve read this year—it isn’t restricted to only work published in 2022. However, works that were published this year will be marked with two asterisks (**) and presented first in each category as awards eligible.

(**) Means the work was published in 2022 and is eligible for SFFH awards consideration.

Novels & Craft Books

• Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg, Random House Publishing Group
• Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, Catapult Books

Poetry Collections

• Ban en Banlieue by Bhanu Kapil, Nightboat Books
• Cutlish by Rajiv Mohabir, Four Way Books
• Crush by Richard Siken, Yale University Press
• Soft Science by Franny Choi, Alice James Books

Nonfiction

• ** The One Body Problem by Meg Elison, Uncanny Magazine
• The Bad Dad Redemption Arc Needs to Die by Nino Cipri, Uncanny Magazine
• Seduced by the Ruler’s Gaze: An Indian Perspective on Seth Dickinson’s Masquerade by Sid Jain, Uncanny Magazine

Novelettes

• O2 Arena by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, originally published in Galaxy’s Edge #53, reprinted in Apex Magazine
• You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa Wong, Uncanny Magazine

Short Stories

• ** Dick Pig by Ian Muneshwar, Nightmare Magazine
• ** Annunciation by P. Akasaka, Strange Horizons
• ** Lakeboys by Sean Chua, Baffling Magazine
• ** What Are We If I Stay by K.S. Walker, Baffling Magazine 
• ** The Bone Pickers by Kelsey Hutton, Podcastle
• ** One Day the Cave Will Be Empty by K.J. Chien, Fantasy Magazine
• ** Christopher Mills, Return to Sender by Isabel J. Kim, Fantasy Magazine
• ** To Hunger, As with Perfect Faith by Radha Kai Zan, Uncanny Magazine
• ** Ribbons by Natalia Theodoridou, Uncanny Magazine
• ** Letters from Roger by Emily Sanders, Apparition Lit
• ** Death Work by K.S. Walker, The Deadlands
• ** Mouth and Marsh, Silver and Song by Sloane Leong, Fireside
• ** I Will Sing Your White Bones Home by Cat Hellisen, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• ** The Stars We Raised by Xiu Xinyu, translated by Judy Yi Zhou, from The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators, edited and collected by Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang, Tordotcom

(Now for the short stories published pre-2022!)

• tragedy of the sugarcane ghost by Desirée Winns, khōréō magazine
• Between the Meat World and the Real World by Angie Sijun Lou, Columbia Journal
• The Failing Name by Eugen Bacon and Seb Doubinsky, Fantasy Magazine
• Diamond Cuts by Shaoni C. White, Uncanny Magazine
• Bride Before You by Stephanie Malia Morris, Nightmare Magazine
• Georgie in the Sun by Natalia Theodoridou, Uncanny Magazine
• The Half Dark Promise by Malon Edwards, Shimmer Magazine
• Morrigan in the Sunglare by Seth Dickinson, Clarkesworld
• Robot by Helena Bell, Clarkesworld
• The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu, Clarkesworld
• With Fate Conspire by Vandana Singh, from Ambiguity Machines, Small Beer Press
• Selkie Stories Are for Losers by Sofia Samatar, Strange Horizons

Poems

• ** stream of dreams where my mouth asks not be blood-light by Sodïq Oyèkànmí, Strange Horizons
• ** How to make contact with a lost star system by Henry Farnan, Strange Horizons
• ** Salvage by Hedgie Choi, POETRY, February 2022
• ** God-Country by Tina Chang, POETRY, November 2022
• ** Against Pink by Dara Yen Elerath, POETRY, December 2022
• ** Things I Left You by Dara Yen Elerath, POETRY, December 2022
• Jessica Gives Me a Chill Pill by Angie Sijun Lou, Muzzle Magazine
• i find my body and my body by Shaoni C. White, Fantasy Magazine
• Stranger Organs by Shaoni C. White, Apparition Lit

So that’s my 2022 recommended reading round-up! I’m grateful to have read so many incredible works this year. Do consider reading these works, and speaking well of them, and nominating them for awards! And please consider supporting and subscribing to short SFFH publications. Every bit of funding does make a difference.

If you’re interested in my work from 2022, my award-eligible story “Potemora in the Triad” is free to read in Fantasy Magazine, and I have a mailing list here. I look forward to the work I’ll be encountering in 2023!

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Potemora in the… Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol. 2!

Super excited (and still a little disbelieving) to announce my first ever sale to a Year’s Best, for my June 2022 Fantasy Magazine story, “Potemora in the Triad”. The Year’s Best Fantasy, Vol. 2 is edited by Paula Guran, and it’ll be out by Tyr Books. Just realized this is my first anthology sale, reprint sale, and physical copy appearance, too!

Paula Guran sent me an e-mail that I had to reread several times. I didn’t expect it at all, since I didn’t sub Potemora to a portal for consideration, but also, I didn’t expect this career goal to happen to me for many years. In my mental goals category, Year’s Bests happen to the many authors I look up to, not to me!

And the TOC of writers I’ll be published alongside– holy moly! Everyone is so incredible!!

My many many thanks to Arley and Christie of Fantasy Magazine for believing in Potemora, to Paula Guran for selecting it, to my crit partners who helped me hone it, and to everyone who has read the piece and loved it. I love this story, and I think it’s the best, and most ambitious, short story I’ve written as of yet. I’m so excited that it’ll be reaching a new audience in The Year’s Best Fantasy.