STACKED: What’s on Maggie Su's Shelf

I read this during my MFA, and it had a huge impact on my writing. Aimee Bender uses speculative elements to get at the heart of real situations—hugely influential for me.

A wonderful novel about a woman who takes care of two kids who spontaneously combust. It's also speculative fiction that gets right to the emotional core.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu and Severance by Ling Ma are both books that take the Asian American scripts we’ve been given and twist them. They use form, incorporate dystopic elements, and explore how we can tell stories—immigration stories, generational stories, stories of Asian American men—in new and exciting ways.

A really fantastic series of tales that plays with comic form, folk tales, and myths. It's just a wonderful read.

A short story collection that thinks about horror, class, and culture in such an interesting way. I was just engrossed by this collection and this writer—it's just fantastic.

A wonderful, weird, indescribable book. It has elements of fairy tale that take you down a rabbit hole. I love work that surprises me like that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about queerness and horror, and this is just a really well-edited horror collection of essays from queer authors. It’s a treat.

A novel that really breaks convention and was impossible to predict. It weaves together past and present, explores the strangeness of the beauty industry, and is so deeply invested in character. I was weeping. It’s a fantastic book.