Snoop my shelves

Every writer has their list—favorites, must-reads, the things that helped them when they were stuck. Here’s mine. Maybe not all of it, but at least the big ones. From craft talk to poetry to genres, here is a peek at me through the lives I’ve loved to live through other people’s pages.

Craft and Style:

Steering the Craft, Ursula K Le Guin

Imaginative Writing, Janet Burroway

Plot Perfect, Paula Mumier

The Wayward Writer, Ariel Gore

Writing Archetypal Character Arcs, K.M.Weiland

The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, Paula Munier

The Essential Worldbuilding Blue Print and Workbook, Scribe Forge

The Emotion Thesaurus

Poetry:

Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong

Don’t Call Us Dead, Danez Smith

You Better Be Lightning, Andrea Gibson

Potted Meat, Steven Dunn

Bless the Daughter Raised By a Voice in Her Head, Warsan Shire

Astro Poets, Alex Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky

Lunch Poems, Frank O’Hara

Modern (enough) Fiction:

Feed, Mira Grant

Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo

The Deep, Rivers Solomon

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

Neon Gods, Katee Robert

Pucking Around, Emily Rath

Uprooted, Naomi Novik

The Witch’s Heart, Genevieve Gornichec

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

The Foxglove King, Hannah Whitten

Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin

Nettle and Bone, T Kingfisher

Anatomy: A Love Story, Dana Schwartz

Graphic Novels:

Check Please, Ngozi Ukazu

The Prince and the Dressmaker, Jen Wang

Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh

Classics:

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Dracula, Bram Stoker

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

Non-Fiction and Memoir:

Ten Steps to Nanette, Hannah Gadsby

Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, Margaret Atwood

It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror, Joe Vallese

Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Carol J. Clover