I’ve just finished rereading the ARC of my forthcoming book of poetry El Rey of Gold Teeth, so I count that. Otherwise, I’ve been on a streak in 2023 thus far! I’ve read: 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw

Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s by Tiffany Midge

From Threatening Guerillas to Forever Illegals by Yajaira M. Padilla

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon

100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell

City Without Altar by Jasminne Mendez

The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña by Dagoberto Gilb

Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall

A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe

Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion by Jia Tolentino

I Can’t Date Jesus by Michael Arceneaux

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Favorite: Playing with ‘non-literary’ forms for literary purposes. Please tell me if someone’s written a short story or poem as a restaurant menu… 

Least favorite: white writers writing as or through non-white people

Write everything down somewhere where you can find it later. That brain fart from 3 years ago may fit somewhere into your newest poem or story!

Toss up between One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, or 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. You could open them up to random pages and discover something new about your life.

That you ought to stick to certain mediums/genres/forms. Labels like poetry, fiction, non-fiction, criticism, theater, etc. should be tools or jumping off points to facilitate visions and language and not molds that limit your imagination. Stick a soliloquy in your short story! Put a few sentences from a film criticism into your poem! See what happens. You don’t tell a filmmaker to just stick to comedies or dramas or short films or 3-hour epics. You don’t tell a painter to just stick to landscapes or oils or even painting for that matter. Play with all the forms and molds! Break them if you need to!