Interviews

Wasp’s Nest author Kat Stoddard asks readers to reconsider how they view intimacy

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Wasp’s Nest author Kat Stoddard asks readers to reconsider how they view intimacy

When I heard there was going to be a queer love triangle novel inspired by one of my favorite queer-coded movies, The Philadelphia Story (1940), I got my hands on it. Kat Stoddard’s Wasp’s Nest introduced me to the alternating POVs of bride-to-be Tess, her ex-husband Peter, and Peter’s fake wedding date Mitch over a chaotic wedding week on Cape Cod. Layers of tension, including class divisions, untold truths, and lingering feelings, are baked into this situation and the story that unfolds, which makes for sharp comedy. More dramatic are the tensions the characters feel within themselves, which are heightened as they come together, each “on the precipice of a new life,” as Kat told me.     

I couldn’t have imagined that as Wasp’s Nest claimed a spot on my bedside table, Kat would quickly become a friend and confidant during a singularly crazy experience–publishing our debut books a few weeks apart. It was a delight to talk with her about the importance of relationships to art making, censorship parallels between 1940 and today, our mutual disdain for culturally mandated milestones, and why a creative life is worth pursuing, no matter how much money it leads to.  

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inside the collection, Interviews

Inside the Collection: Mac Crane Dissects Perverts

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Inside the Collection: Mac Crane Dissects Perverts

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 Perverts, writer Mac Crane explores the messy intersections of desire, shame, intimacy, and identity through seventeen audacious stories that push queer life to its exhilarating and unsettling extremes. Set in worlds where people pay to reenact hate crimes, ogle mythical performers, or blur the lines between fantasy and exploitation, Crane’s characters search for connection in places most people would rather ignore. Equal parts provocative, darkly funny, and unexpectedly tender, Perverts argues that those living on society’s margins often see its contradictions most clearly. Crane is also the author of the novel I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Indie Next pick, and Lambda Literary Awards winner, as well as A Sharp Endless Need. Their fiction has appeared in Literary Hub, The Sun, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere, and they have received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, American Short Fiction, and the Vermont Studio Center.

In our latest Inside the Collection Q&A, Crane takes readers inside their debut short story collection, Perverts.

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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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