Several months ago, I asked a host of stellar writers, editors, and publishers to send me a list of their favorite books published in 2022. Scroll down below to see the finalists for the 2022 Big Other Readers’ Choice Award as well as a list of honorable mentions! The winner of the 2022 Big Other Readers’ Choice Award will be announced at the 2022 Big Other Book Awards Ceremony (date and time for the virtual event tbd).

Big thanks to the following writers, editors, and/or publishers (many of whom are Big Other contributors) for their lists:

Andrew Altschul, Dan Beachy-Quick, Margo Berdeshevsky, Jane Ciabattari, Andrei Codrescu, Raymond de Borja, Annie DeWitt, Elaine Equi, Jared Daniel Fagen, Joan Frank, Steve Gillis, Alissa Hattman, Karen Heuler, Charles Holdefer, Tim Horvath, Laura Ellen Joyce, Hillary Leftwich, Michael Leong, Daniel Levin Becker, Garielle Lutz, Rob McLennan, Ted Morrissey, David Naimon, Jefferson Navicky, Tracy O’Neill, Aimee Parkison, D. A. Powell, Dawn Raffel, Victoria Redel, Dimitri Reyes, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Martha Ronk, Jerome Sala, George Salis, Rone Shavers, Donna Baier Stein, Stephanie Strickland, Terese Svoboda, Rodrigo Toscano, Edwin Torres, Tony Trigilio, Hao Guang Tse, Robert Vaughan, Rosmarie Waldrop, Angela Woodward, James Yeh, and Micah Zevin.

Stayed tuned for announcements of the finalists for the 2022 Big Other Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction, and translation! In the meantime, here’s the list of finalists for the 2022 Big Other Readers’ Choice Award:

Finalists:

Will Alexander’s Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane) (City Lights Books)

Rae Armantrout’s Finalists (Wesleyan University Press)

Emmanuel Carrère’s Yoga (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Chloé Cooper Jones’s Easy Beauty (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)

Mark de Silva’s The Logos (Clash Books)

Helen DeWitt’s The English Understand Wool (New Directions)

Percival Everett’s Dr. No (Graywolf Press)

Renee Gladman’s Plans For Sentences (Wave Books)

Saeed Jones’s Alive at the End of the World (Coffee House Press)

Janice Lee’s Separation Anxiety (Clash Books)

Hillary Leftwich’s Aura (Future Tense Books)

Edie Meidav’s Another Love Discourse (Terra Nova Press)

Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark (William Morrow & Company)

Aimee Parkison’s Suburban Death Project (Unbound Edition Press)

Olga Ravn’s The Employees (New Directions), translated by Martin Aitken

Victoria Redel’s Paradise (Four Way Books)

Cristina Rivera Garza’s New and Selected Stories (Dorothy, a Publishing Project)

Jerome Sala’s How Much?: New & Selected Poems (NYQ Books)

Jack Skelley’s Interstellar Theme Park: New and Selected Writing (BlazeVOX Books)

Terese Svoboda’s Dog on Fire (University of Nebraska Press)

Roberto Tejada’s Why the Assembly Disbanded (Fordham University Press)

Rodrigo Toscano’s The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books)

Meg Tuite’s White Van (Unlikely Books)

Robert Vaughan’s Askew (C0wboy Jamboree)

Alejandro Zambra’s Chilean Poet (Viking), translated by Megan McDowell

Honorable Mentions:

Malik Abduh’s All the Stars Aflame (Get Fresh Books)

Moncho Alvarado’s Greyhound Americans (Saturnalia Books)

E. C. Ambrose’s Drakemaster (Guardbridge Books)

Daphne Palasi Andreades’s Brown Girls (Random House)

Leah Angstman’s Out Front the Following Sea (Regal House Publishing)

José Angel Araguz’s Rotura (Black Lawrence Press)

Rachel Aviv’s Strangers to Ourselves (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Elif Batuman’s Either/Or (Penguin Press)

Billy-Ray Belcourt’s A Minor Chorus (W. W. Norton & Company)

Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done (Soho Press)

Joshua Bennett’s The Study of Human Life (Penguin Books)

Margo Berdeshevsky’s Kneel Said the Night (Sundress Publications)

Hannah Black’s Tuesday or September or the End (Capricious Publishing)

Gabriel Blackwell’s Doom Town (Zerogram Press)

Max Blecher’s The Lighted Burrow (Sublunary), translated by Christina Tudor-Sideri

Jackson Bliss’s Amnesia of June Bugs (7.13 Books)

Naomi Booth’s Animals at Night

Despy Boutris’s Burials

Dionne Brand’s Nomenclature (Duke University Press)

Jace Brittain’s Sorcererer (Schism Neuronics)

Stephen Brockwell’s Immune to the Sacred (Mansfield Press)

Blake Butler’s Aannex (Apocalypse Party)

Amina Cain’s A Horse at Night (Dorothy, a Publishing Project)

Billy Cancel’s Buttercup Tantrum Mutton Encore (Broadstone Books)

Marina Carreira’s Tanto Tanto (CavanKerry Press)

Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now (Viking)

May-Lee Chai’s Tomorrow in Shanghai (Blair)

Amit Chaudhuri’s Sojourn (New York Review of Books)

Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions)

Lisa Hsiao Chen’s Activities of Daily Living (W. W. Norton & Company)

Billie Chernicoff’s Minor Secrets (Black Square Editions)

Gabrielle Civil’s The Déjà Vu: Black Dreams & Black Time (Coffee House)

Andrei Codrescu’s Too Late for Nightmares (Black Widow Press)

Ama Codjoe’s Bluest Nude (Milkweed Editions)

Wanda Coleman’s Heart First into This Ruin: Complete Sonnets (Black Sparrow Press)

Rio Cortez’s Golden Ax (Penguin Books)

Brenda Coultas’s The Writing of an Hour (Wesleyan University Press)

Angie Cruz’s How Not to Drown in a Cup of Water (Flatiron)

Paul Cunningham’s Fall Garment

Vincent Czyz’s The Secret Adventures of Order (Rain Mountain Press)

Alice Elliott Dark’s Fellowship Point (Marysue Rucci Books)

Randee Dawn’s Tune in Tomorrow (Solaris)

Kathryn Davis’s Aurelia, Aurélia (Graywolf Press)

Osamu Dazai’s Early Light (New Directions), translated by Ralph McCarthy and Donald Keene

Anna DeForest’s A History of Present Illness (Little Brown and Company)

Glenn Diaz’s When the World Ended I Was Thinking About the Forest

Glenn Diaz’s Yniga

Hernan Diaz’s Trust (Coffee House Press)

Andrew Farkas’s The Great Indoorsman: Essays (University of Nebraska Press)

María José Ferrada’s How to Turn Into a Bird (Tin House Books), translated by Elizabeth Bryer

Sasha Fletcher’s Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World (Melville House)

Meg Forajter’s Interrogating the Eye

Amy Fusselman’s The Means (Mariner Books)

Julian Gewirtz’s Your Face My Flag (Copper Canyon Press)

Melissa Ginsburg’s Doll Apollo (LSU Press)

Jake Goldsmith’s Neither Weak nor Obtuse (Sagging Meniscus Press)

Jewelle Gomez’s Still Water

Nicholas Goodly’s Black Swim (Copper Canyon)

G. F. Gravenson’s The Sweetmeat Saga (Tough Poets Press)

James Greer’s Bad Eminence (And Other Stories)

Meron Hadera’s A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times (Restless Books)

Damaris B. Hill’s Breath Better Spent: Living Black Girlhood (Bloomsbury Publishing)

Brenda Hillman’s In a Few Moments Before Later (Wesleyan University Press)

Noor Hindi’s Dear God, Dear Bones, Dear Yellow (Haymarket Books)

Cara Hoffman’s Ruin (PM Press)

Harmony Holiday’s MAAfA (Fence Books)

Victoria Hood’s My Haunted House (FC2)

Hua Hsu’s Stay True (Doubleday Books)

David Jackson Ambrose’s Unlawful Disorder (Jaded Ibis Press)

Zain Khalid’s Brother Alive (Grove Press)

Andrey Kurkov’s Grey Bees (Deep Vellum), translated by Boris Dralyuk

Joan Kwon Glass’s If Rust Can Grow on the Moon (Milk and Cake Press)

Erica Plouffe Lazure’s Proof of Me (New American Press)

Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s The Evening Hero (Simon & Schuster)

Reina J. Leon’s Black God Mother This Body

William Lessard’s Instrument for Distributed Empathy Monetization

Adam Levin’s Mount Chicago (Doubleday Books)

Nate Lippens’s My Dead Book

Sara Lippman’s Lech (Tortoise Books)

Prathna Lor’s Emanations: Poems (Wolsak and Wynn)

Cate Marvin’s Event Horizon (Copper Canyon Press)

Julian Mithra’s Unearthingly

Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris (Knopf)

Chad Morgan’s Chad Morgan & Other Poems (Meekling Press)

Kyle Muntz’s The Pain Eater

Vi Khi Nao’s Swimming with Dead Stars (FC2)

Elle Nash’s Gag Reflex (Clash Books)

Angelo Nikolopoulos’s Pleasure (Four Way Books)

Kelli Russell Ogodon’s Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press)

Peter O’Leary’s The Hidden Eyes of All Things (Cultural Society)

Pauline Oliveros’s Quantum Listening (Ignota Books)

Julie Otsuka’s The Swimmers (Anchor Books)

Bridget Penney’s Licorice

Alyssa Quinn’s Habilis (Dzanc Books)

Lisa Robertson’s Boat (Coach House Books)

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez’s Rebel Matter: Poems 2000-2021 (Shearsman), translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s The Man Who Could Move Clouds (Doubleday Books)

Kathleen Rooney’s Where Are the Snows (Texas Review Press)

Rebecca Rukeyser’s The Sea Plane on Final Approach (Doubleday Books)

Greg Sarris’s Becoming Story (Heyday Books)

Susan M. Schultz’s Lilith Walks (BlazeVOX Books)

Violaine Schwartz’s Papers (Fern Books), translated by Christine Gutman

Giada Scodellaro’s Some of Them Will Carry Me (Dorothy, a Publishing Project)

Namwali Serpelli’s The Furrows (Hogarth Press)

Hugh Sheehy’s Design Flaw (Acre Books)

Kate Siklosi’s Leavings (Timglaset)

Ali Smith’s Companion Piece (Pantheon Books)

Catriona Strang’s Unfuckable Lardass (Talonbooks)

Daniel B. Summerhill’s Mausoleum of Flowers (CavanKerry Press)

Stacy Szymaszek’s Famous Hermits (Archway Editions)

Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez (Tin House Books)

Brandon Taylor’s Real Life (Riverhead Books)

Lynne Tillman’s Mothercare (Soft Skull)

Lynne Tillmann’s Weird Fucks

J.C. Todd’s Beyond Repair (Able Muse Press)

Brenda S. Tolian’s Blood Mountain (Raw Dog Screaming Press)

Steve Tomasula’s Ascension (FC2)

David Trinidad’s Digging to Wonderland: Memory Pieces (Turtle Point Press)

Simon Van Booy’s The Presence of Absence (Godine)

Vauhini Vara’s The Immortal King Rao (W.W. Norton and Company)

Jose Antonio Villarán’s Open Pit (Counterpath)

A. A. Vincent’s Person, Perceived Girl (Barrow Street Press)

Stella Wong’s Spooks (Saturnalia Books)

Candice Wuehle’s Monarch (Soft Skull)

Yuichi Yokoyama’s Plaza (Living the Line)

Lila Zemborain’s Soft Matter (Quantum Prose), translated by Christopher Winks 

Altered States (Ignota Books), edited by Sarah Shin and Ben Vickers

In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century (The Song Cave), translated by Wong May