Professor’s Book Makes Two ‘Best of 2025’ Reading Lists

Author blends her own illustrations, personal essays and animal-related verbs to create modern-day bestiary

Key Highlights

• Amie Souza Reilly, Writer-in-Residence and Director of Writing Studies at Sacred Heart University, is the author of Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2025)
• Human/Animal is an illustrated hybrid nonfiction book that combines lyric essays, etymology, cultural criticism and memoir to examine language, violence, surveillance and gendered power in contemporary American life
• The book is structured around animal verbs (e.g., “to badger,” “to ferret”), using linguistic history to explore how everyday language encodes colonial, domestic and interpersonal violence
• Reilly’s work engages creative nonfiction, lyric essay pedagogy and visual art, reflecting her teaching and scholarship in writing studies and rhetoric at Sacred Heart University
• Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays was published in April 2025 and was named to multiple “What to Read in 2025” lists, signaling its relevance to current literary and cultural conversations

Amie Souza Reilly, Sacred Heart University’s writer-in-residence and assistant teaching professor, is earning high praise for her book Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays, a work of hybrid nonfiction that blends lyric essay, cultural criticism and her own illustrations to examine how language, fear and power operate in everyday life.

Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, the book has been named to two separate “best-of” lists: Electric Lit’s “Best Nonfiction of 2025” and the Washington Independent Review of Books’ “Our 51 Favorite Books of 2025.” Reilly described the honor as both surprising and affirming. “It was such a joy to see my name alongside writers I admire so deeply,” she said.

The book is structured as a contemporary bestiary. Bestiaries originated in the ancient world and became popular in the Middle Ages, combining facts about animals with illustrations, imagination and lessons.

Human/Animal departs from traditional animal symbolism by organizing its essays around animal verbs—to “badger,” to “ferret,” to “squirrel”—rather than animal nouns. Reilly traces the etymology of these verbs while weaving in a deeply personal narrative about her family’s experience with escalating harassment by neighbors, exploring how violence can manifest subtly, through proximity, surveillance and language itself.

“We use the names we’ve given animals as verbs,” Reilly said, “and that felt like an interesting way of thinking about naming and control.” As she researched the histories of those words, she noticed a recurring pattern. “When I started looking into the etymology,” she said, “I realized—surprise, not surprise—that so much of it is tied to violence.”

The book emerged during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Reilly began collecting what she calls “animal verbs” almost playfully—often with input from her family—before realizing the linguistic and thematic weight of the project. What began as curiosity gradually became a framework for understanding the ways violence is embedded in language, labor, motherhood and colonial histories.

Rather than offering a linear narrative or clear resolution, Human/Animal embraces associative thinking and formal disruption. Reilly likens the book’s structure to the way she teaches lyric essays, following ideas where they lead while asking what holds them together. “You have one idea, and you follow where it goes,” she said. “The question becomes: what’s the ribbon that ties it together?”

In Human/Animal, that ribbon is often etymology—though Reilly is equally interested in how research can destabilize understanding. “Is thinking about language going to help me think through violence?” she asked. “Or is it going to disrupt the way I already think I know it? And the answer was always both.”

Writing the book required revisiting a period of sustained fear and uncertainty. Asked how it felt to return to that time, Reilly answered simply, “Not great.” Still, she described art-making as a long-standing way of processing experience. “There was always a sense that I could turn this into art,” she said. “That’s how I’ve always thought through things.”

Despite its personal origins, Human/Animal has resonated with an unexpectedly wide audience. Reilly noted that some of the most meaningful responses have come from readers she did not anticipate. “If one person can say, ‘This happened to me, and now I don’t feel so lonely,’” she said, “then it was worth it.”

Reilly holds a master’s degree in English literature from Fordham University and an MFA from Fairfield University. Her work has appeared in Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, HAD, The Chestnut Review, The Atticus Review and other literary journals. At Sacred Heart University, she teaches writing and rhetoric and directs writing studies, bringing her interest in associative thinking, hybrid forms and language to the classroom.

Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays was published in April 2025 and is available in paperback and ebook formats at Amazon and other outlets.