Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her off hours, you can find her writing on her Substack, Winchester Ave, and posting photos of her Corgis on Instagram and Twitter @kdwinchester.
If you’re a huge memoir fan like me, your TBR is probably up to your eyeballs (I know mine is!). There are so many incredible memoirs and books of personal essays hitting shelves all the time. So to help you narrow down your TBR, here are a few recent must-reads.
Sucker Punch: Essays by Scaachi Koul
Scaachi Koul immortalized her relationship with her husband in her essay collection One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. Now, years later, she has written about their divorce. Sucker Punch is just as funny and heartfelt as her first collection, but these essays are written by a more honest version of herself. She shares the ways she bent the truth in One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter and how time has given her a more clear perspective on her life.
Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover by Sarah Perry
Sara Perry LOVES candy. Candy has been with her through every high and low of her life. In Sweet Nothings, Perry writes about her memories of different kinds of candy in short, punchy essays readers are meant to savor. Some memories are sweet, others bitter, just like the candy she writes about. Perry excels at describing the exact feeling of what it’s like to eat each type of candy. Every texture and flavor is highlighted on the page. It’s like a love letter to her favorite foods.
Bibliophobia: A Memoir by Sarah Chihaya
Bibliophobia is the must-read memoir of the season. From its first pages, we understand how much Chihaya loves books. They’ve been with her throughout her life, especially in the times she’s deeply struggled with her mental health. Each chapter centers around a book or handful of books that have changed her life. As she writes in her chapter on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, books have ruined her life in the best possible way. And Chihaya knows who her audience is; she even includes a list of texts in the beginning of the book so her readers can easily reference her favorite titles.
Stories I Lived to Tell: An Appalachian Memoir by Gary Carden, Edited by Neal Hutcheson
On the back cover of this book, Lee Smith called Gary Carden a “National Treasure,” and for good reason. His memoir-in-tales, Stories I Lived to Tell, follows the course of his life and gives readers a peek into Carden’s family and upbringing. These short snippets create a deep sense of place, home to the proud people who call the Appalachian Mountains home. The short, punchy chapters feel like flashes of memory that create a quilt-like picture of Carden’s life. But together, they give readers a more complete picture.
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This week, we’re highlighting the best new poetry collections of 2025 (so far)! From the from deeply personal to powerfully political, many of these collections reflect the zeitgeist and introduce some fresh voices in poetry. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
How is it that we’re already more than a quarter of the way through 2025? I’m ahead of my reading goals and still feel so far behind at the same time. I’ve packed in plenty of poetry, though, finding lots of wonderful and surprising voices emerging. It’s early, but totally time to check in with some of the best new poetry collections of 2025 so far.
It’s funny how timely these collections are. Keep in mind that publishing moves VERY SLOWLY, so books that have been released in the first quarter of 2025 were probably completed in late 2023 or early 2024, only seeing the light of day recently. So, these collections were written in the run-up to last year’s presidential election. Nevertheless, many of these collections feel like guttural reactions to the world right now. Amazing how prescient art and artists can be, huh?
These poetry collections run the gamut from deeply personal to powerfully political. Let’s face it, those two are often the same anyway, particularly when it comes to poetry. Most exciting to me are how many of these best new poetry collections of 2025 so far are fresh voices to the poetic scene. Let’s dig into those collections, shall we?
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