Larissa Pham follows up her essay collection Pop Song, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, with her debut novel, Discipline. The book will be released by Random House on January 20, 2026, and is now available for pre-order.
In the novel, the main character, Christine, is on a book tour for her book, which is a thinly veiled revenge fantasy based on a relationship she had with a former professor. Her world is turned upside down when he reaches out after years of silence and invites her to visit him on a remote island off the coast of Maine.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Discipline, designed by Rachel Ake, alongside a Q&A with Pham about crafting her enchanting debut and the elegant mystery the cover alludes to.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
Early on, I’d made a really vibey moodboard for the book’s narrator, Christine, which had lots of deep blues, ocean scenes, and flash photography. Once Discipline started to take shape and I understood more fully what it was about, I started to have a sense of what I wanted in a cover. For some reason, I kept imagining a very simple, white or grayscale cover—which is not far from where the designer landed!
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
I was asked to make a moodboard for the cover, which was a very different project than making one for the text. I found that I was drawn to book jackets with striking typography, a hero image, and/or designs that held some kind of internal metaphor or double meaning. (The cover of Salman Rushdie’s Knife is a great example.) Because Discipline is in large part a book about visual art, I was also interested in covers that incorporated a painterly element, like the beautiful New Directions paperback of Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos. But—and I think this is a good thing—once the moodboard is off to the art department, the writer doesn’t get to offer any feedback until the drafts are in!
I was really gratified to see how much care and elegance Rachel Ake put into the design drafts. There were two really strong cover ideas, one of which more directly referenced a pivotal moment in the book (I’ll tease you as to the nature of that scene!). It was a lovely cover, but we ultimately chose to go in a more—to my mind—evocative and atmospheric direction.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
I was so happy! I love this cover dearly, and I know it was designed with such care and consideration for the novel. It’s elegant, mysterious, and works on both a large and small scale, with a neat little illusion from afar.
How does the cover work to convey what the contents of the story are?
Christine, my protagonist, begins the book on the road—she’s on tour for her own debut novel. But she ultimately ends up in Maine, on an island, and that landscape becomes a big part of the story. I love how the woman’s face rising up out of the water conveys a sense of mystery—her expression, to me, is one of shock but also, paradoxically, a laid-back determination. Then, of course, from a distance, her profile becomes the shape of an island at sea—it gives it an expansive, seascape feeling. And the typeface! I love how sinister and graceful it is. When writing Discipline, I wanted to find a balance between a really literary text—getting into the language, having fun with the meta-elements of the story—and writing a book that felt like a slow burn thriller, where you feel this sense of dread or excitement wondering what’s going to happen next. I think this cover captures that feeling perfectly.