I Become a Delight to My Enemies – Sara Peters
A visceral example of where fiction can go and hot damn! Sign me the f*** up.
Crystallography – Christian Bök
The first collection of poems to change entirely, how I perceived the English language to be.
The Hearing Trumpet – Leonora Carrington
You see through the eyes of the precocious ninety-two-year-old Marian Leatherby, “inmate of an old ladies’ home haunted by occult doctrines and poisonings, and administered by the pedantic Dr. Gambit.” It is a wild and wonderful, fantastical journey full of secret intrigue, feminist liberation and an upheaval of cosmic proportions.
Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse – Anne Carson
Blushing the boundaries between poetry and verse, this book is perhaps one of the earliest instances of experimental fiction. Pulling from Greek mythology, art practice and whimsy, you are taken on a wildly unique coming-of-age story that connects an intimate relationship with a thorough examination of the soul.
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
A subtle zen escape built on the cross-cultural telling of a story. It is a beautiful collection of short prose pieces, stitched into one.
Ellen Chang-Richardson is an emerging poet and the founder of Little Birds Poetry, a series of editing workshops based in Ottawa & Toronto, Canada. Winner of the 2019 Vallum Award for Poetry, her work has appeared in publications including Ricepaper Magazine, Coven Editions: Grimoire, and the Lit Mag Love Anthology I: Blood & Water. Her first chapbook is forthcoming with Anstruther Press (Spring 2020). Find her on Twitter | FB | Instagram @ehjchang.