With apocalyptic topics ranging from dystopia to nuclear disaster, this reading list compiled by WLT intern Kaitlin Hawkins also conjures ideas of end-days in all forms from poetry to prose.

1. Zombies

Brains: A Zombie Memoir Dead Inside: Do Not Enter Warm Bodies The Last Man Zone One


Robin Becker, Brains: A Zombie Memoir (HarperCollins, 2010)
www.harpercollins.com

Dead Inside: Do Not Enter (Chronicle Books, 2011)
www.chroniclebooks.com

Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies (Atria Books, 2011)
www.amazon.com

Mary Shelley, The Last Man (Dover, 2010; originally published 1826)
doverpublications.com

Colson Whitehead, Zone One (Knopf Doubleday, 2011)
www.randomhouse.com

 

2. Natural Disasters/Environmental

The Year of the Flood The Drought Firewater Isle of Dreams World Made by Hand

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (Bloomsbury, 2009)
yearoftheflood.com

J. G. Ballard, The Drought (Norton, 2012; originally published 1964)
books.wwnorton.com

Edward Cohen, Firewater (Akashic Books, 2003)
www.akashicbooks.com

Keizo Hino, Isle of Dreams (Dalkey Archive, 2010)
www.dalkeyarchive.com

James Howard Kunstler, World Made By Hand (Grove Press, 2009)
www.groveatlantic.com

 

 

3. Nuclear Disaster

Curse the Names Dust On the Beach

Robert Arellano, Curse the Names (Akashic, 2012)
www.akashicbooks.com

Jacqueline Druga-Marchetti, Dust (Writers Club Press, 2002)
www.amazon.com

Nevil Shute, On the Beach (Bantam, 1972; originally published 1952)
www.randomhouse.com

 

 

4. Dystopian

Things We Didn't See Coming Zero and Other Fictions Pop Apocalypse The Slynx

Steven Amsterdam, Things We Didn’t See Coming (Knopf Doubleday, 2010)
www.randomhouse.com

Huang Fan, Zero and Other Fictions (Columbia University Press, 2012)
cup.columbia.edu

Lee Konstantinou, Pop Apocalypse (HarperCollins, 2009)
www.harpercollins.com

Tatyana Tolstaya, The Slynx (New York Review Books, 2007)
www.barnesandnoble.com

 

5. Story Collections

Wastelands The End of the World The Last Man After the Apocalypse

John Joseph Adams, ed., Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (Night Shade Books, 2008)
nightshadebooks.com

Martin H. Greenberg, The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse (Skyhorse, 2010)
www.skyhorsepublishing.com

Hunter Liquore, ed., The Last Man Anthology: Tales of Catastrophe, Disaster, and Woe (Sword and Saga Press, 2010)
www.swordandsagapress.com

Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse: Stories (Small Beer Press, 2011)
www.amazon.com

 

 

6. Poetry

Ceiling of Sticks Apocalypse, and Other Poems No End to the World Homesick for the Earth

Shane Book, Ceiling of Sticks (University of Nebraska Press, 2010)
www.nebraskapress.unl.edu

Ernesto Cardenal, Apocalypse, and Other Poems (New Directions, 1977)
ndbooks.com

Helene Dorion, No End to the World: Selected Poems (Guernica Editions, 2004)
www.guernicaeditions.com

Jules Supervielle, Homesick for the Earth (Bloodaxe, 2011)
www.bloodaxebooks.com

 

7. Miscellaneous

In the Country of Last Things The Old Man in the Wasteland Everything Matters!

A is for Armageddon Tancredi The Architect of Ruins

Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things (Penguin, 1987)
us.penguingroup.com

Nick Cole, The Old Man and the Wasteland (CreateSpace, 2011)
www.amazon.com

Ron Currie Jr., Everything Matters! (Viking, 2009)
us.penguingroup.com

Richard Horne, A Is for Armageddon: A Catalogue of Disasters That May
Culminate in the End of the World as We Know It
(HarperCollins, 2010)
www.harpercollins.com

James Palumbo, Tancredi (Bloomsbury, 2011)
www.bloomsbury.com

Herbert Rosendorfer, The Architect of Ruins (Dedalus Books, 2011)
www.dedalusbooks.com