Compiling a list of the best works in a year can feel like kind of a wild exercise – it’s impossible for any one person to read everything that comes out in any given year, even when you get to narrow the field a little bit and limit yourself to only Latinx writers. This year’s list represents writers past and present, writing in English and Spanish (and sometimes both), presses big and small, books for children and adults (and maybe kind of both), works categorized as fiction and non-fiction and poetry. What it doesn’t represent is even a tenth of the fantastic books written and published by Latinx writers this year.

We would recommend using this list as a jumping off point to find new favorite writers, to read further, and to write your own story.