Fatimah Asghar (poet and filmmaker): Pet by Akwaeke Emezi, Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman, 1919 by Eve L. Ewing, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Ben Austen (writer): The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan, Ordinary People by Diana Evans, Patriot Number One by Lauren Hilgers, Angels by Denis Johnson, Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Martha Bayne (writer and editor): High Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing by Ben Austen, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon, Circe by Madeline Miller, The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America by Mark Sundeen
@ChiPartyAunt (Twitter personality): Da Bears! How the 1985 Monsters of the Midway Became the Greatest Team in NFL History by Steve Delsohn, In Life, First You Kick Ass: Reflections on the 1985 Bears and Wisdom from Da Coach by Mike Ditka, The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: The Untold Story of the Gangland Bloodbath That Brought Down Al Capone by William J. Helmer and Arthur J. Bilek, Bad As I Wanna Be by Dennis Rodman, Crazy from the Heat by David Lee Roth, Chicago’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Windy City by Jonathan Stockton
John Corbett (writer, record producer, and gallery owner): Tell Them of Battles, Kings, & Elephants by Mathias Énard, Keith Rowe: The Room Extended by Brian Olewnick, Ideal Suggestions: Essays on Divinatory Poetics by Selah Saterstrom, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh, Songs for Schizoid Siblings by Lionel Ziprin
Maria Hadden (49th Ward alderman): The Power by Naomi Alderman, City Power: Urban Governance in a Global Age by Richard Schragger, Market Cities, People Cities: The Shape of Our Urban Future by Kevin T. Smiley and Michael Oluf Emerson
Sarah Hollenbeck (co-owner of Women & Children First and writer): Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi, Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn, Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Greta Johnsen (host of Nerdette podcast): Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey, Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes, Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
Bea Malsky (co-owner of Build Coffee and developer at DataMade): Total Destruction of the National Museum of Anthropology by Eduardo Abaroa, Conditioner by Liz Barr, The Hundreds by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart, The Undying: A Meditation on Modern Illness by Anne Boyer, Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros, The January Children by Safia Elhillo, 1919 by Eve L. Ewing, Film Food Footnotes by Filmfront, Ley Lines #18: One & Three by W.T. Frick, Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon, A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten, Mom Zine #1 and #2 by Kim Nguyen, Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life by Kari Marie Norgaard, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang
Nate Marshall (poet and educator): The Twenty-Ninth Year by Hala Alyan, 1919 by Eve L. Ewing, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr, An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz, We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
H. Melt (poet and bookseller): Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T Fleischmann, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Whet Moser (journalist and polymath): Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America by Kathleen Belew, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner, Trampoline: An Illustrated Novel by Robert Gipe, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne
Natalie Y. Moore (journalist and author): The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul by Tanisha C. Ford, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth by Josh Levin, There There by Tommy Orange, Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora by Emily Raboteau
J.R. Nelson (Gossip Wolf writer and manager at Myopic Books): Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro, Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin edited by Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder, Rag: Stories by Maryse Meijer, Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez
Bill Savage (professor at Northwestern University): American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes, Let’s Play Two: The Legend of Mr. Cub, the Life of Ernie Banks by Ron Rapoport, The World is Always Coming to an End: Pulling Together and Apart in a Chicago Neighborhood by Carlo Rotella
Levi Stahl (marketing director at University of Chicago Press): Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman, Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane, Beast and Man by Mary Midgely, novels and stories by Craig Rice, The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope
Nell Taylor (executive director of the Read/Write Library): Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown, The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago by Daniel Kay Hertz, Subject to Change: Trans Poetry and Conversation edited by H. Melt
Bianca Xunise (comics artist): Sweaty Palms Vol 2: The Anthology About Anxiety edited by Sage Coffey, My Solo Exchange Diary by Nagata Kabi, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero- O’Connell, Cannonball by Kelsey Wroten, Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu v