Book Covers, News

See the cover of The Vanishing Act by Eoin Connolly

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See the cover of The Vanishing Act by Eoin Connolly

The Vanishing Act, the debut novel by Eoin Connolly, follows Colm, an anxious and isolated copywriter whose days are spent scrolling through his phone, worrying about climate catastrophe, and sharing takeout with his inexplicably talking cat, Gazdanov. After watching the foreign minister of Tuvalu deliver a press conference while standing knee-deep in rising ocean water, Colm becomes consumed by the idea of reducing his own burden on the planet and decides to disappear—first from the internet and then, increasingly, from the world itself. Both apocalyptic satire and tragicomedy, the novel explores climate anxiety, digital overload, loneliness, and the increasingly desperate ways we try to make sense of a world in crisis.

The Vanishing Act will be published on February 23, 2027, by Catapult and is available for preorder now.

Eoin Connolly is an Irish writer based in Lisbon and a recipient of a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. His short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, and elsewhere.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of The Vanishing Act, designed by Victoria Maxfield with art direction by Nicole Caputo, along with a Q&A with Connolly about its creation.

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Interviews

When Harry Met Sally Met Marguerite Duras: Inside the Mind of Annie Lord, Author of The Project

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When Harry Met Sally Met Marguerite Duras: Inside the Mind of Annie Lord, Author of The Project

Annie Lord has served as British Vogue’s dating columnist and previously wrote a darkly comic memoir about the demise of her five-year relationship. So it’s no surprise that she knows all the romcom tropes and subverts them with aplomb in her fiction debut The Project. The novel reads as a modern Pygmalion in reverse, with best friends Daisy and Maya pledging to emotionally, culturally, and stylistically make-over their laddy friend James. It’s all too easy to connect with these funny, flawed characters—likewise with Lord, even over email and across six time zones. Her responses to my questions—covering everything from her favorite Marguerite Duras quote to how to write a good bad sex scene—were candid and charming. No doubt she’d make a great romcom heroine.

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Interviews

Devyn Defoe on Burnside, Lemony Snicket, and Writing the End Times

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Devyn Defoe on Burnside, Lemony Snicket, and Writing the End Times

In Burnside, Devyn Defoe paints an end-of-days portrait of two young women in California that manages to make you laugh, break your heart, and double-check that you’re actually awake and not in some absurdist hallucination. Referred to as a “signature chronicle of our American endtimes” by author Chang-rae Lee, Defoe’s unforgettable characters navigate patriarchy, climate crises, and a whole host of issues for which we can thank late-stage capitalism. 

I sat down with Devyn Defoe to discuss how Burnside came to be, the enduring influence of Lemony Snicket, and the endless rewards of bookselling. 

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Interviews

Stacey Yu on Love, Magic, and Coming of Age in New York City

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Stacey Yu on Love, Magic, and Coming of Age in New York City

Kitten by Stacey Yu, one of Debutiful’s Most Anticipated Debut Books, follows protagonist Katie, who is fresh out of university and desperate not to enter the adult world quite yet. When she goes to the Hamptons with her boyfriend James, she becomes instantly enamored with his cat Silver. 

Across Katie’s dynamics with James and Silver, we understand the wound of her upbringing: her enmeshment with her mother, her anxious attachment, and her tendency to seek what is familiar over what is healthy or good. In Silver, she sees the potential for the eternal and pure childhood that she so craves, but she also knows that this desire is impossible.

Katie wants to be both left alone and folded into the world. She wants to be free of responsibility but she also wants to have purpose and grounding. Ultimately, she has to set herself (and Silver) free from these impossible oppositions, and choose a path forward. 

Stacey and I spoke about how this tender coming-of-age novel came to be, and the redemptive quality of small, simple choices. The conversation below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Interviews, my reading life

Leila Renee was shaped by Toni Morrison, Goosebumps, and The Phantom Tollbooth

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Leila Renee was shaped by Toni Morrison, Goosebumps, and The Phantom Tollbooth

Leila Renee is a writer whose fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction and a Fulbright Award, and an MFA graduate of Syracuse University, she now makes her debut with Soft Spots, a darkly funny, emotionally incisive novel about family estrangement, obsession, and the difficult work of forgiveness.

Soft Spots follows recent college graduate Robin Clarke after she flees her abusive family for a teaching job in South Bend, Indiana. As Robin becomes increasingly consumed by her dysfunctional school, her seemingly perfect roommate, and the possibility of reconciliation with her ailing father, the novel explores memory, self-sabotage, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

We asked Renee to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.

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inside the collection, Interviews

Inside the Collection: Emily Doyle dissects Please Don’t Touch the Body

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Inside the Collection: Emily Doyle dissects Please Don’t Touch the Body

What makes a great short story collection? In Debutiful’s latest Q&A series, Inside the Collection, short story writers will take readers through their writing, editing, and sequencing of their debut short story collection.

In Please Don’t Touch the Body, Emily Doyle delivers eleven inventive, genre-bending stories that explore the vulnerabilities, contradictions, and strange absurdities of modern life. Moving effortlessly between the surreal and the deeply human, the collection follows characters searching for agency, intimacy, and belonging—from a woman reclaiming herself through an anonymous advice column to Ronald Reagan reincarnated as a puppy and a young woman untangling the expectations of her religious upbringing from her own desires. By turns funny, unsettling, and emotionally resonant, Please Don’t Touch the Body announces Doyle as a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction. Doyle is also the author of the forthcoming novel Encounter. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Sun, and elsewhere, and she has received numerous honors, including the Abraham Lincoln Polonsky Endowed Award and the Bread Loaf–Rona Jaffe Foundation Participant Scholarship. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UC Riverside.

In our latest Inside the Collection Q&A, Doyle takes readers inside her debut short story collection, Please Don’t Touch the Body.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud

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See the cover for Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud

Untranslatable, the debut memoir by Lara Vergnaud, traces the intersections of language, identity, and everyday life through the eyes of a literary translator. As Vergnaud brings novels across linguistic and cultural borders, she navigates her own experiences with illness, infertility, marriage, and the lingering sense of unbelonging shaped by a life between countries and languages. Weaving together personal reflection with the art of translation, the memoir explores what it means to remain invisible while giving voice to others, and how language can both reveal and obscure the self.

Untranslatable will be published on February 16, 2027, by Catapult and is available for preorder now.

Lara Vergnaud is a writer and literary translator specializing in North African literature. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and Words Without Borders, and she has translated more than a dozen novels, including The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, which was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Born in Tunisia, raised in the United States, she now lives in southern France.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Untranslatable, designed by Victoria Maxfield with art direction from Nicole Caputo, along with a Q&A with Vergnaud about its creation.

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Book Covers, News

See the cover for Notifications On by Emily Holland

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See the cover for Notifications On by Emily Holland

In her debut poetry collection, Notifications On, Emily Holland explores queer longing, digital intimacy, and the complicated ways technology shapes modern relationships. Through poems that capture the exhilaration and ache of texting, dating, and yearning in an always-online world, Holland examines what it means to seek connection when our phones are never out of reach.

Holland is the Executive Editor of Poet Lore and a genderqueer lesbian poet whose work has appeared in numerous publications. Their debut collection, Notifications On, will be published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House on January 26, 2027. It is available for pre-order now.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Notifications On‘s cover, designed by Emily Fussner, along with a Q&A with Holland about its creation.

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