Matt Snee is a writer based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Currently reading – Philadelphia Fire, by John Edgar Wideman. Born in 1941, Wideman is an American novelist, essay writer, and memoirist. This novel depicts the 1985 police bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia, which destroyed 65 houses and killed 11 people, including 5 children.
Currently reading – Saga, Volumes 4 and 5, written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples. Slowly working through this series. Don’t read enough graphic novels.
Currently reading – Still Life with Meredith, by Ann Lewinson. Lewinson is an American playwright, critic, and journalist. This is a short novel.
Currently reading – River Hymns, by Tyree Daye. Daye is a young American poet.
According to Goodreads, I read 211 books this year. But this slim novel, by Mexican author and journalist Fernanda Melchor, was the best. Brutal, appalling, unsentimental, but also heartbreaking and beautiful. A masterpiece.
Currently reading – Luster, by Raven Leilani. Born in 1990, Leilani is an American writer, and this novel, about a young black woman in New York juggling her desire to make art and her relationship with a white man in an open marriage, was one of 2020’s literary sensations.
Currently reading – Thirteen Months of Sunrise, by Rania Mamoun, translated by Elizabeth Jaquette. Born in 1979, Mamoun is a Sudanese journalist and fiction writer. This is a collection of her short stories.
Currently reading – Cities of the Plain, by Cormac McCarthy. Born in 1933, McCarthy is considered one of America’s greatest living writers, and the author of All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and No Country for Old Men. I read the first two parts of this trilogy 20 years ago. Better late than never.
Currently reading – The Tent, by Miral al-Tahawy. Al-Tahawy is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer from a conservative Bedouin background. This novel depicts life for women in Bedouin society. she currently lives and teaches in the Untied States.
Currently reading – Jonny Appleseed, by Joshua Whitehead. Whitehead is a Canadian First Nations poet and novelist, of Oji-Cree descent. This is his first novel.
