Interviews, my reading life

Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life

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Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life

Ben Reeves’s debut novel has already earned significant recognition before publication, with an early draft of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt winning the 2024 Bath Novel Award. Now, the UK author makes his debut with a novel that asks one of literature’s oldest questions through an unexpected narrator.

In Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Death isn’t a terrifying force but a quiet, compassionate presence named Travis, who spends his days comforting people in their final moments. But when he befriends a midwife and her young daughter across the hall, he begins to discover what it truly means to live. Tender, philosophical, and quietly hopeful, Reeves’ novel is a moving meditation on grief, love, and the fleeting beauty of being alive.

Reeves answered the recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his debut novel.

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Interviews

Alison Leiby on Identity, Chronic Pain, and Why the Messiest Parts of Life Are Worth Writing About

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Alison Leiby on Identity, Chronic Pain, and Why the Messiest Parts of Life Are Worth Writing About

I’m a Lot, the debut memoir from comedian and writer Alison Leiby, showcases her signature deadpan humor and combines it with sincere reflection to create a memorable memoir-in-essays that unravels the expectations put on modern women. Drenched in wit, her writing unpacks everything from the impact of a near-death experience to the highs of discount shopping, and even the joys of being a “Housewives” stan. Pushing back against the narrow definitions women are told they need to fit into, Leiby embraces the joy of unrepentantly living every one of your identities. 

I spoke with Leiby about the complexities of writing a memoir, the pressure to be palatable, and why humor was integral to her essays.

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News

See the cover and read an excerpt from Not a Good Mother by Karabi George

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See the cover and read an excerpt from Not a Good Mother by Karabi George

Every parent has imagined the unthinkable, if only for a fleeting moment.

In Karabi George‘s debut thriller, Not a Good Mother, that nightmare becomes reality when a new mother’s infant daughter disappears during a playdate, turning a frantic search into a relentless examination of guilt, suspicion, and the impossible expectations placed on mothers. George, whose short fiction has appeared in Litro Magazine and other publications, was shortlisted for the 2024 CWA Debut Dagger and is a recipient of the 2024 ThrillerFest scholarship.

Not a Good Mother will be published by Harper Perennial on April 6, 2027, and is available for pre-order now.

Debutiful is excited to reveal the cover of Not a Good Mother, designed by Molly von Borstel of Faceout Studio, and share an exclusive excerpt from this gripping debut.

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Interviews

Chiara Bullen on D&D, Fantasy Taverns, and Writing Like You Rolled a Nat 20

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Chiara Bullen on D&D, Fantasy Taverns, and Writing Like You Rolled a Nat 20

The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance captures everything that makes a great TTRPG campaign memorable: the camaraderie, improvisation, and delight of telling a story with friends. In her debut novel, Chiara Bullen follows an ambitious historian investigating a legendary mountain where adventurers arrive eager for glory, yet somehow never make the climb. We spoke with Bullen about D&D’s influence on her writing, creating unforgettable fantasy taverns, and why food scenes are always a critical success.

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inside the collection, Interviews

Inside the Collection: T Clark dissects All This Want (And I Can’t Get None)

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Inside the Collection: T Clark dissects All This Want (And I Can’t Get None)

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 All This Want (And I Can’t Get None), writer T Clark captures the feverish hunger and dizzying pleasures of Black girlhood and queer coming-of-age. Set largely in and around a working-class neighborhood just outside New York City, the stories follow young Black girls, women, and nonbinary characters as they navigate the uneasy space between adolescence and adulthood, desire and restraint, and the people they are and the people they might become. Prior to publishing their debut collection, Clark’s fiction appeared in Joyland, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Offing, Fourteen Hills, and elsewhere. They also received fellowships and support from the Omi International Arts Center, the Fine Arts Work Center, the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Vermont Studio Center.

In our latest Inside the Collection Q&A, Clark takes readers inside their debut short story collection, All This Want (And I Can’t Get None).

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book list, Recommendations

Five Books Set in the East of England, recommended by Laura Evans

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Five Books Set in the East of England, recommended by Laura Evans

People talk about Norfolk’s big skies, but until we relocated here two years ago I didn’t fully appreciate what they meant. Even now I’m sometimes ambushed by the strangeness of the landscape: the relentless flatness, the sense of being constantly exposed. (I don’t know how it compares to the American Midwest – please do message and tell me – but to me there’s something peculiarly inspiring about countryside where we’re forced to invent interest; it does something strange to the mind.)

Elsewhere, the topography of East Anglia – Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire – is varied and beautiful and often deeply eerie. Still and reed-covered Broads. Bleak fens. Crumbling coastline, thriving medieval ports swallowed by the sea. Facing Europe, it is an ancient place of arriving. There have been people here a long, long time – 800,000 years, at least. From the treasures of Sutton Hoo to the recent worldview-collapsing discovery that humans were making fire 350,000 years earlier than we previously knew, there’s no telling what’s buried in the peat and the clay. How could that not inspire you?

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book list, Recommendations

Cosmos in a Calabash: Seven Literary Fictions That Explore Themes of Gender, Race, and Justice Through Intimate Storytelling, Recommended by Kangkang Li Kovacs

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Cosmos in a Calabash: Seven Literary Fictions That Explore Themes of Gender, Race, and Justice Through Intimate Storytelling, Recommended by Kangkang Li Kovacs

In Chinese folktales, there is an intriguing concept, Cosmos in a Calabash. Imagine a magical calabash that the immortals wear on their belt. It looks as small as a flask. But if you enter into the calabash, you’ll experience a whole cosmos within – a cosmos no less real, complex or diverse than the world outside. 

For me, a good book is often such a calabash.

My debut novel, Nothing to My Name, explores the theme of political turmoil in Chinese modern history through the day-to-day lives of three women: a grandma, a mother and a daughter. This choice of grounding something large and collective in the smallest moments of personal life felt intuitive for me. I have always been intrigued by books that are large enough to tackle social-political themes in a sweeping manner, but at the same time feel intimate and personal. Here are seven literary fictions that inspired me as a writer, because they explore the eternal themes of gender, race, injustice and belonging through character-driven, intimate storytelling.

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Interviews, my reading life

Nemesis Mine author Amy Archer has been writing stories since she was six

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Nemesis Mine author Amy Archer has been writing stories since she was six

Amy Archer has been writing stories since she was six years old, and now her debut novel, Nemesis Mine, is out for all to enjoy. It follows Cyrus, a villain whose reputation has taken an unexpected hit as his magical powers begin producing flowers instead of fear. Desperate to reclaim his status, he agrees to a publicity stunt with Athaca’s beloved hero, Maximillian: a fake rivalry designed to boost both of their profiles. But as staged battles turn into genuine feelings, Cyrus discovers that pretending to hate his nemesis is far more complicated than being a villain.

We asked Archer 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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