Columnist/Book Reviewer

Dylan Desmond is a musician, poet, and devout nerd ever-curious about the uncanny, mystical, and surreal forces surging through the human experience. He is the recipient of an BA in English Literature from the University of Kansas and an MFA in poetry writing from Cedar Crest College. He has attended residencies at Ateneu Barcelones in Spain, INNES Institute in Vienna, Trinity College in Dublin, and regularly performs internationally with musical projects. His forthcoming poetry manuscript will be released in late 2025. A devout and eclectic reader, Desmond's book list from 2024 is as follows:

1. Fjords Vol. 1 – Zachary Schomburg
2. If They Come for Us – Fatimah Asghar
3. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
4. Country of Ghost – Gaylord Brewer
5. Introducing Chaos – Ziauddin Sardar
6. Sula – Toni Morrison
7. Ship of Gold – Emile Nelligan
8. Desire for a Beginning/Dread of One Single End – Edmond Jabes
9. Intruder in the Dust – William Faulkner
10. On Alchemy – Brian Cotnoir
11. Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will – Robert Sapolsky
12. Cath Maige Tuired – Morgan Daimler
13. Breathturn – Paul Celan
14. Tar Baby – Toni Morrison
15. Alternating Current – Octavio Paz
16. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
17. Lugh – Morgan Daimler
18. The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas – Machado de Assis
19. The House of the Dead – Fyodor Dostoevsky
20. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
21. Demystifying the Manuscript – Susan Rich
22. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Phillip K Dick
23. Thirty-Two Words for Field – Magan Manchan
24. Threadsuns – Paul Celan
25. Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self – Andrea Wulf
26. Disappearances – Paul Auster
27. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology, and Lost Futures – Mark Fisher
28. Wolf-Men and Water Hounds – Manchan Magan
29. Theophanies – Sarah Ghazal Ali
30. The Painter on his Bike – Enda Wyley
31. Sunstone – Octavio Paz
32. The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
33. The Black Pullet – Anonymous
34. The Argonauts – Maggie Nelson
35. A Ghost in the Throat – Doireann Ni Ghriofa
36. Lament for Art O’Leary – Eileen O’Connell
37. Selected Poems – A.E. (George W Russell)
38. Ulysses – James Joyce
39. Stars Burn Regardless – Jean O’Brien
40. Voices on the Wind: Women Poets of the Celtic Twilight – Ellis Ni Dhuibhne
41. Anam Cara – John O’Donohue
42. The Tower – WB Yeats
43. On Photography – Susan Sontag
44. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
45. To Star the Dark – Doireann Ni Ghriofa
46. The Door – Magda Szabo
47. Small Things Like These – Claire Keegan
48. The Playboy of the Western World- JM Synge
49. So Late in the Day – Claire Keegan
50. The Street of Crocodiles – Bruno Schultz
51. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
52. Island of the Setting Sun: In Search of Ireland’s Ancient Astronomers – Anthony Murphy
53. Selected Poems – Samuel Beckett
54. The Revisionist – Miranda Mellis
55. The Rebel – Albert Camus
56. Augury: Poems – Eric Pankey
57. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1 – Michel Foucault
58. The Next Monsters – Julie Doxsee
59. The Anti-Christ – Friedrich Nietzsche
60. Eaters of the Dead – Michael Chrichton
61. The Language of Black Holes – Mat McNerney
62. Butcher’s Tree – Feng Sun Chen
63. Fictions- Jorge Luis Borges
64. The Aleph and Other Stories – Jorge Luis Borges
65. Selected Poems – George Oppen
66. The 42nd Parallel – John Dos Passos
67. Foster – Claire Keegan
68. At Fear’s Altar – Richard Gavin
69. Johnny Got His Gun – Dalton Trumbo
70. Moravagine – Blaise Cendrars
71. The Devil’s Highway – Luis Alberto Urrea
72. The Masks of God, Vol 1: Primitive Mythology – Joseph Campbell
73. A Confession and other Religious Writings – Leo Tolstoy
74. Pigafetta is My Wife – Joe Hall
75. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
76. The Winter of Our Discontent – John Steinbeck
77. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
78. The Bella Vista: Poems – Emma Ruth Rundle
79. The Aeneid – Virgil
80. Death to the Pigs – Benjamin Peret
81. Cynicism – Ansgar Allen
82. The Death of the Adversary – Hans Keilson
83. Harvestman – Steve Von Till
84. The Poetics of Space – Gaston Bachelard
85. The Twilight World- Werner Herzog
86. Sleep Has His House – Anna Kavan
87. Dead End – Michel Surya
88. Gods and Fighting men: The Story of the Tuatha De Danann and the Fianna of Ireland – Lady Gregory
89. Disgrace – JM Coetzee
90. I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
91. Voices of Time – JG Ballard
92. The Holy Terrors – Jean Cocteau
93. Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez – Charles Bowden
94. Nohow On – Samuel Beckett
95. Endgame – Samuel Beckett
96. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
97. Bastard Out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison
98. Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness - Richard Gavin
99. Veil: New and Selected Poems – Rae Armantrout
100. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
101. Pan – Knut Hamsun
102. Funeral Rites – Jean Genet
103. No Exit – Jean-Paul Sartre
104. Zama – Antonio di Benedetto
105. Telluria – Vladimir Sorokin
106. Secondhand Time – Svetlana Alexievich