I set an ambitious goal for myself in 2021: read 50 books. With that daunting task before me, I just needed to decide exactly what I wanted to read. I’m not picky about genre or style—all I want is a good story. Without much direction, I turned to the Art Works podcast for guidance. Our brilliant podcast host Josephine Reed has interviewed some of the greatest literary talents of our time, and I knew in the archives there would be a treasure trove of reading inspiration. It is fascinating to hear these authors share the complexities of their work and process, and I hope the episodes I picked below excite the reader in you. I know that my TBR (To Be Read) pile is considerably larger!   

1. Rebekah Taussig: After listening to Taussig, who has a PhD in Disability Studies and Creative Nonfiction, on the podcast, I'm not only planning on picking up her book, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, but I now follow her on Instagram (@sitting_pretty). Her memoir-in-essays actually developed from her Instagram captions, which she calls "mini-memoirs." I'm particularly interested in reading her essay on how acts of kindness and charity often de-center and belittle the people they're meant to help. 
2. Jesmyn Ward: Ward is something of a household name. That tends to happen when you win the National Book Award...twice. I've read her most recent National Book Award winner, Sing, Unburied, Sing, and am looking forward to picking up more of her work. In 2014, Ward joined the podcast to discuss her memoir, Men We Reaped. The memoir grapples with the deaths of five young Black men, including her younger brother, from her hometown of DeLisle, Mississippi. When speaking about the book's structure, which alternates between Ward's life and the stories of these young men, she told the Arts Endowment: "Part of what I'm trying to do there is I'm trying to provide the reader with some sort of context, so perhaps they can understand why an epidemic of young Black men dying in the rural South, would happen." 
3. Elizabeth Acevedo: I am a firm believer that young adult novels are not just for young adults, and Acevedo's work is a great example of their universality. She is also a National Book Award winner for Young People's Literature for her second book, The Poet X, a novel-in-verse. She has since written two more novels and spoke about the most recent, Clap When You Land, on the podcast. This is exactly the kind of story I love, with a family drama at its heart. When a father dies in a plane crash, his two daughters discover one another's existence for the first time. One lives in New York, and the other the Dominican Republic. As Acevedo notes on the podcast, "It's this story of place, of home, of loss, but also of the things that you gain when you have to be incredibly resilient."
4. R.O. Kwon: Kwon's debut novel, The Incendiaries, was everywhere in 2019. I remember seeing it's eye-catching kaleidoscope cover almost everywhere I went, and now I'm wondering why I never picked it up. Kwon shares the inspiration behind the novel and the ten-year journey of writing it on the podcast, and having that context makes this story of two college students caught up in a dangerous cult somehow even more intriguing. And I have to mention, Kwon is also a 2016 NEA Literature Fellow! 
5. Jeff Vandermeer: I have had many friends try to describe the plots of Vandermeer's books, which straddle sci-fi, fantasy, and eco-ficiton. Inevitably they give up and say, "You just have to read it." He joined the podcast to discuss his novel Borne, which was my first venture into the Vandermeer universe. And who better to explain Borne than Vandermeer himself? "It's about a woman who's a scavenger, and who comes across something that looks a little like a terrestrial sea anemone, and it's actually embedded in the fur of the giant bear that terrorizes the city." Let me clarify that it's a flying bear.

What are you excited to read this year? Let us know on Twitter @NEAArts!