Tara McEvoy on Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Tara McEvoy on Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, a collection that explores the form’s boundaries

Yohann Koshy on Dril Official ‘Mr Ten Years’ Anniversary Collection

Yoshan Koshy’s piece on a twisty, topical collection of tweets was highly commended in this year’s Observer/Anthony Burgess prize

This year’s prize for arts journalism goes to Jason Watkins for his review of Daisy Campbell’s Pigspurt’s Daughter

A pioneering look at motherhood from Sarah Knott and an often poignant study of those who, for whatever reason, do not become parents by Lorna Gibb

Layers of memory and self, real and imagined, reveal deep patterns in this complex novel

Diana Athill, Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Strout all provide wisdom and humour in times of need

Adam Higginbotham’s pacy narrative of the disaster is complemented by Kate Brown’s astonishing research into what came after

This exuberant debut is a swirling, multi-generational tale that shifts from the historical to the futuristic

Vanity, gold and tokens of love – how a miniaturist persuaded Tudor England that painters weren’t just artisans but artists

A story from a Somali pirate kicks off this outlandish comic critique of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now

A doomed and magical place where fish fall from the sky and the earth spits up weapons

Fear is a recurring theme in this part-fictional portrait of the scientist that includes original quotations, photographs and letters

In the follow-up to Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, myth and modern life combine in the poetic tale of an imaginative everychild

The kingdoms of west Africa had diplomatic links and equal trade with Europe. Then the age of empires began

The ‘feckless underclass’ still looms too large in popular culture as politicians and the media scapegoat the poor