Gulf Coast Editors' Best of 2016 List

The Editors

This year we asked our editors at Gulf Coast to list their five favorite books of 2016. They did just that, and the lists that they provided are in no particular order (it was hard enough for most of us to narrow it down to five). The rules also allowed for reprints and reissues to be included in the running (who doesn’t love a great reprint of Morrison or Proust?). Some of our editors confessed that they were behind on their 2016 reading and so listed their favorite books from 2015, which, naturally, shouldn’t be forgotten. Enjoy!

Christian Bancroft:

Karl Ove Knausgård, Some rain must fall: My Struggle Book 5 (translated by Don Bartlett)
László Krasznahorkai, The Last Wolf & Herman (translated by John Batki and George Szirtes)
Josué Guébo, My Country, Tonight (translated by Todd Fredson)
Jarrod Hayes, Queer Roots for the Diaspora: Ghosts in the Family Tree
Renee Angle, WoO

Erika Jo Brown:

Phoebe Robinson, You Can't Touch My Hair
Jonathan Moody, Olympic Butter Gold
Benjamin Rybeck, The Sadness
Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
Ada Limon, Bright Dead Things

Corey Campbell:

Melissa Yancy, Dog Year
Debbie Graber, Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday
Erin Stalcup, And Yet It Moves
Paula Whyman, You May See a Stranger
Allegra Hyde, Of This New World

Dan Chu:

Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds
Solmaz Sharif, Look: Poems

Alex McElroy:

Renee Gladman’s, Calamities
Solmaz Sharif, Look: Poems
Jen George, The Babysitter at Rest
Ananda Devi, Eve Out of Her Ruins (translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman)
Brian Blanchfield, Proxies: Essays Near Knowing

Jonathan Meyers:

Allegra Hyde, Of This New World
Chitra Divakaruni, Before We Visit the Goddess
Gabriel Blackwell, Madeleine E.
Norm Macdonald, Based on a True Story: A Memoir
Laura Jane Grace, Tranny: True Confessions from Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout

Luisa Muradyan:

Safiya Sinclair, Cannibal
Ocean Vuong, Night Sky With Exit Wounds
Monica Youn, Blackacre
Etgar Keret, The Seven Good Years
Donika Kelly, Bestiary

Alex Naumann:

Anne Carson, Float
César Aira, Ema, the Captive
Rivka Galchen, Little Labors
Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them (Cristanne Miller, Editor)
Aracelis Girmay, The Black Maria

Georgia Pearle:

Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (paperback print)
Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: the 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
Solmaz Sharif, Look: Poems
J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy
francine j. harris, play dead

Nathan Stabenfeldt:

Peter Gizzi, Archeophonics
Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts
Fred Moten, The Service Porch
Monica Youn, Blackacre
DC Universe: Rebirth Issue #1

Charlotte Wyatt:

Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter
Tana French, The Trespasser
Joy Williams, Ninety-Nine Stories of God
Benjamin Percy, Thrill Me: Essays on Fiction
(Tie) Shirley Jackson, The Haunting on Hill House (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, in honor of centennial) / Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (paperback edition)