Charlotte Runcie has written for The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Guardian and she was longlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize in 2023 and was a Foyle Young Poet of the Year.
Her debut novel Bring the House Down, set to publish on July 8, 2025, follows a theater critic at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe pens a scathing one-star review of a struggling actress with whom he had a one-night stand. Claire Lombardo calls it a “sharp-witted, wise, and authentic–what a fierce, fantastically funny read.”
Debutiful is pleased to reveal the cover, designed by Oliver Munday, of Runcie’s debut alongside a Q&A with the writer to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the cover came to be.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
I’m a design geek and I spend a lot of time following the work of book cover designers on Instagram and checking out winners of book design awards. I’m obsessed with how book cover designers communicate a story through such a tightly constrained format. So while I didn’t have specific ideas of what I wanted the cover to look like, I knew I wanted it to convey the feel of the novel, and I was excited to see how a professional designer would interpret the story. That said, I did have a general sense that I imagined this book having a warm colour palette. I’m not sure why, but it always made me think of reds and pinks. While I don’t think I ever voiced that slightly mystical feeling to anyone, it’s pleasing that the final cover has independently ended up aligning with that palette.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
When my editor at Doubleday, Cara Reilly, told me that Oliver Munday would be designing the cover, I was thrilled because I already knew and admired his work. Before Cara sent Oliver a brief, she and I discussed a variety of book covers that we both loved and what we liked about them. Then Cara put together a brief for Oliver, and he came back with some initial designs.
There was one design in particular that we liked a lot, but not everyone at the publisher agreed that it was right for the book. It’s important that everyone’s happy, so after a little bit of back and forth on which direction to take instead, Oliver tried something completely different: an illustrative and theatrical approach with a sense of movement and humour to it, which I loved right away. Luckily, everyone else loved that one too. I asked if Oliver could push the handmade feel of the design even further, as this is a quality I always fall for on book covers, and I sent over some images of vintage matchbox designs that his illustration reminded me of. Oliver made the final cover more textured and tactile, as if it had been silkscreen printed.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
I absolutely loved it. Something I love about all Oliver Munday’s designs is that they never look like any other book I’ve seen before, and they also convey the unique world of a particular book in a way that makes you want to pick it up right away. I’m so happy with the cover we ended up with.
How does the cover work to convey what the contents of the story are?
Bring the House Down is the story of a philandering theatre reviewer who, after writing a brutal one-star review of a one-woman-show by an actress that he’s spent the night with, faces a sensational public reckoning from her and everyone he’s ever wronged. It has some real pace and drama to it, but also a lot of humour, and it’s set in the world of theatre at the Edinburgh Fringe. I love how Oliver Munday’s design feels rich and artistic, and also slightly unsettling. It’s a crunchy and intriguing image, and you know something dramatic and unexpected is about to go down. And then there’s that handmade quality that Oliver has given the design, which makes the book feel true to the rough-and-ready creative spirit of Edinburgh Fringe, where actors and comedians go to risk it all, try something new and make their names.