Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Memorial | 2020 | Bryan Washington | Buy |
| 2 | Family Meal | 2023 | Bryan Washington | Buy |
| 3 | Palaver | 2025 | Bryan Washington | Buy |
Bryan Washington has published three standalone novels. Memorial (2020) was his debut novel and follows Mike, a Black American, and Benson, a Japanese American, as their relationship is tested by family obligations that send them in opposite directions. The novel is structured around cooking and shared meals, with food serving as a language for the things the characters struggle to say directly.
Family Meal (2023) shifts focus to two friends rebuilding their lives after personal losses, connected by their work in a Houston bakery. Palaver (2025) is his most recent novel. Washington’s fiction has been praised for its warmth, its refusal to sensationalize queer experience, and its detailed attention to the physical world of kitchens, neighborhoods, and the everyday work of feeding people.