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Use this space to discuss books you're reading or that might fit the 5th Read Harder task. Sign up for our new Read Harder newsletter to get recommendations for each task delivered straight to your inbox!��

I'm thinking of I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet or American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau. I own and would love to read both, but the second is longggg, so may have to save for a different year!

Not So Stories

The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories, edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin

Octavia's Brood was a great short story collection with sci-fi stories inspired by Octavia Butler's workOctavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

I found mine!
/book/show/5...

Leaning towards In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States, but it's super long! Also Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.

Decisions decisions...

Little America: Incredible True Stories of Immigrants in America
Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers
We Wear the Mask: 15 Stories of Passing in America

I got A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Anthology last year, and I think it's a good book to pick up.

Rebecca wrote: "Leaning towards In Other Words: Literature by Latinas of the United States, but it's super long! Also Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.

Outsiders Someone who has read this, would this count as diverse? They all feel like outsiders. I know there is some racial diversity as well as some disability rep too.

Some possibilities from my TBR: We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers, This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us, or Foreshadow: Stories to Celebrate The Magic of Reading & Writing YA.

If you're looking for a graphic novel, This Place: 150 Years Retold is a great option.

I'll read Afromyth: A Fantasy Collection.

I'm thinking that Wonderful Women of the World looks like a really interesting nonfiction comics anthology and it would fit here, so it will likely be what I go for.

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry

Elizabeth wrote: "If you're looking for a graphic novel, This Place: 150 Years Retold is a great option."

Thanks - this looks perfect for me!

I'm going for Out Now: Queer We Go Again! edited by Saundra Mitchell

Ronnie wrote: "When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry"

This is one of my favorites.

I've got a few poetry anthologies I'm thinking of:

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry

Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations



Also maybe this one: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021

Thinking of reading Habibi: A Muslim Love Story Anthology! I highly, highly, highly recommend Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, possibly my favorite read of the year

Beth wrote: "Some possibilities from my TBR: We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers, This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us, or..."

Ooh, I just bought the babysitters club one. Do you think that's considered diverse?

I read All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis earlier this year and would recommend it for this one!

Wild Tongues Can't Be Tamed: 15 Voices from the Latinx Diaspora

this is my choice! One of my friends has a piece in it, so I'm super excited to read it.

Dani wrote: "Beth wrote: "Some possibilities from my TBR: We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers, [book:This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us|..."

I think so. I'm looking at the table of contents to see who the contributors are, and I'm really interested in the section called "The BSC and Us: On Seeing Ourselves Reflected (or Not)"

Do you think all of the books from 2020's read a SFF anthology edited by a person of color task count?

I'm torn between Cthulhu's Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror, which only has a couple of writers of color, and Dark Dreams: A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers, which is all POC, but is on audiobook, and I don't really like those. I guess I'll get over myself. :D

She Walks in Shadows would also work, but again, it's more feminist-focused than POC-focused, so there are white women involved.

The prompt is "featuring diverse voices;" it could be any type of diversity (or many!) and it doesn't mean that every single person involved has to be diverse. Anyway, here are some options pulled from my kindle library because I'm trying to fulfill as many prompts as I can with books I already own but haven't read yet and also ebook deals newsletters are a really good way to grab anthologies (and ebooks in general) on the cheap. Especially since anthologies can be kind of hefty and take up a lot of space.

His Hideous Heart*
A Thousand Beginnings and Endings
All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages*
Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens*
That Way Madness Lies*
The Starlit Wood*
Uncanny Magazine Issue 24: Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue*
Lightspeed Magazine, June 2015: Queers Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue*
The Mythic Dream*
Nevertheless, She Persisted: Flash Fiction Project
Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy
Don't Call Me Crazy
How Beautiful the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity*
Kink: Stories*

Some of these very obviously also tick off the bonus of being by queer authors and/or editors, but I'm pretty sure all of them do to at least some degree. I've starred the ones I'm super confident about, though (i.e. I know that the editor identifies as LGBTQ+ and/or a significant number of the contributors are LGBTQ+).

I highly recommend these diverse anthologies I read for this year's challenge.

A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century

midnight & indigo: Twenty-two Speculative Stories by Black Women Writers, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, or Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.

I'm currently reading New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color which would be great for this. Since I'll be finished before the new challenge starts, I'm going to go with What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family

Defying Doomsday and the 'sequel' Rebuilding Tomorrow are a pair of anthologies about disabled people not just surviving but thriving through various apocalypses and post-apocalypse scenarios. I'm rereading them, but I love them both so dearly.

I read A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers this year for a SFF anthology edited by a person of color, but it would also work great for this prompt (and is a really solid anthology overall).
I think for this challenge I'll go with A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, which is the other one I considered for the previous challenge.

I'm trying to focus on whittling down my to-read pile this year, so I'm going to read My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. It's not as diverse as it could be, but there is some diversity in the contributors' list (it would have to have some, considering how many contributors there are!), mostly white Americans but with some Asian, Hispanic, Eastern European, and Arab voices.

I think honestly anything/anyone *you* perceive as diverse is fair! This category is quite more open to subjectivity, as it doesn’t specify diverse as LGBTQ+, BIPOC, etc., like some of the other challenges.

I’ve already read the book this year, but I think a good example would be “You’re the Only One I’ve Told: The Stories Behind Abortion�� where 17 different stories are told from the perspectives of women who did not want kids to women who wanted kids but later in life, women who could not afford kids and/or had abusive partners which made them terrified at the prospect of having a child with that individual, connecting them for life... to happily married couples with great careers and women who weren’t ready to give up all their hard work for domestic life.

Also women who desperately wanted the baby but, finding out six months into the pregnancy that if they chose to carry to term, the baby could die within hours after giving birth, or within two months, with very few reaching one year. The baby would also be in agonizing pain as well as brain dead, kept alive only through a ventilator and feeding tubes (this is from
trisomy 13 or Patau syndrome, where . Black women, Indian women, non-binary and asexual, Jewish, Catholic, Hindu.

Megan wrote: "I think honestly anything/anyone *you* perceive as diverse is fair! This category is quite more open to subjectivity, as it doesn’t specify diverse as LGBTQ+, BIPOC, etc., like some of the other ch..."

Ugh, my phone got completely messed up and I accidentally hit post on the comment before it was ready. I think I made my point though, lol. If anyone is interested btw, the author is Dr. Meera Shah.

American Like Me: Reflections on Life Between Cultures

does The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories count??

I am reading Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America - it is middle grades/YA and features unique and diverse voices.

All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism and Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements are two excellent books fitting this theme that I would recommend.

I will be reading So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy

Here are three possibilities from my TBR:


The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century (I'm told this collection has a lot of LGBTQIA+ representation too)
We Can Do Better Than This: 35 Voices on the Future of LGBTQ+ Rights

Nisha wrote: "Here are three possibilities from my TBR:


The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America
[book:Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century|5145674..."

These look like good books. I told myself that one of the ways I'm going to expand my reading horizons are to read more LGBTQ+ books so these seem like they would work towards that.

I read Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America which is a great YA/middle grades option but I also heartily recommend Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture which was one of the best books I read in 2021, and which definitely fits the prompt.

I just read Havana Noir, edited by Achy Obejas, for this one, which was amazing! All crime/noir short stories, the majority of which are translated, and most are by women/people of colour all from/living in Cuba.

Elizabeth wrote: "If you're looking for a graphic novel, This Place: 150 Years Retold is a great option."

Great suggestion, thanks!

If you consider LGBTQIA+ diverse, this is a great graphic novel: Love Is Love: A Comic Book Anthology to Benefit the Survivors of the Orlando Pulse Shooting

Thank you to whoever suggested Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories. I had put it on InterLibrary Loan thinking it might take awhile to get here and it was the quickest ILL that I've ever experienced on arrival time.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through and really enjoying it.

Elizabeth wrote: "If you're looking for a graphic novel, This Place: 150 Years Retold is a great option."

Just picked it up at the library today. I'm excited!

For some fun, quick and easy ones - especially if you love comics - check out the Marvel Voices collection.

Marvel's Voices #1
Marvel's Voices: Pride #1
Marvel's Voices: Legacy #1
Marvel's Voices: Community #1 (of 1) (Marvel's Voices
Marvel's Voices: Identity (2021) #1 (Marvel's Voices
Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices (2021) #1 (Marvel's Voices
Marvel's Voices: Legacy (2022) #1 (Marvel's Voices

I’m going to read “Out Here: An Anthology of Takatapui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa New Zealand��.