First hailed as the “poet laureate of Twitter” during the Weird Twitter era for her deliriously offbeat posts, Tricia Lockwood has since been celebrated for her first two poetry books and then for her breakout memoir Priestdaddy (named one of the Ten Best Books of 2017 by the New York Review of Books ). No One Is Talking About This, her first novel, is perhaps the first to pose one of the defining questions of our times: how to exist in the world with a severe case of Internet Brain Worms. 

The latest book by celebrated Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a genre-defying exploration of the generative power of Indigenous blockades. Bridging politics, story, and song, Simpson uses the figure of “our relative” the beaver (Amik, in Nishnaabemowin) to show how dams and barricades not only stand as agents and symbols of resistance, but also as affirmations of life and sovereign creativity.

Incomparable writer Vivian Gornick is back, this time more concerned with reading. In nine essays, she extolls the virtues of reading, and re-reading, at different life stages, the better to understand her relationship with her psyche, her womanhood, and her self. By examining writers like DH Lawrence, Colette, Elizabeth Bowen, and Natalia Ginzburg, Gornick, and by extension her readers, are that much closer to a deep and powerful self knowledge. 

In one beautiful, Rachelle Baker-illustrated volume, Clover Hope manages to chart a clear and comprehensive path from the earliest female MCs to current megawatt rap stars like Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. Chronicling the biggest names and most underrated talents, The Motherlode has something for everyone, no matter how much you think you already know.

When Vanessa Springora’s complicated memoir came out in French last year, it immediately changed the conversation about the sexual abuse of minors, and the ways in which the French intelligentsia were in turns blind to and complicit in the worst crimes of their most celebrated members. Now in English, Consent is a blistering examination of trauma that refuses easy answers.