“Love the collection, do you have a novel?”
Did we just make every writer with a short story collection tense up? Fear not, here at Debutiful, we love short story collections. Mastering a story in a few thousand words is the hardest thing to do. Figuring out how to do it 10+times is truly masterful work. These story collections explore places like Hawai’i and Guatemala, female desire, trans communities, and addiction.
Below are the ten best debut collections Debutiful founder Adam Vitcavage read this year, some of which were on the Best Debut Books of 2025 list.
Crawl by Max Delsohn
From the publisher: A darkly comic, introspective debut collection that looks beneath the surface of trans life in 2010s Seattle
This collection about the trans experience is sexy, sharp, and sincere. Delsohn has a unique voice and explores different aspects of the trans Seattle community with a kaleidoscopic view. “Sex Is a Leisure Activity” is the perfect taste for what to expect in Crawl.
Extinction Capital of the World by Mariah Rigg
From the publisher: Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawai’i—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.
These ten stories expertly explore desire, loss, displacement, and environmental fragility across characters throughout Hawai’i. Each is electric and lyrical. Rigg’s a master short story writer with unbelievable skill. As someone who has never been to Hawai’i, this transported me there and made me care about the people, locations, and history like no book ever has.
Guatemalan Rhapsody by Jared Lemus
From the publisher: A vibrant debut story collection–poignant, unflinching, and immersive–masterfully moving between sharp wit and profound tenderness, Guatemalan Rhapsody offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of an ever-changing country, the people who claim it as home, and those who no longer do
This collection is already one of my favorites since starting Debutiful. They’re fresh but timeless. Lemus writes about place – both America and Guatemala – with precision and care. He writes with utter compassion. Reading this collection was an absolute delight.
Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore
From the publisher: Artfully and precisely drawn, and steeped in place and history as it explores themes of belonging, inheritance, and deep intimacy, Carrie R. Moore’s debut collection announces an extraordinary new talent in American fiction, inviting us all to examine how the past shapes our present–and how our present choices will echo for years to come.
Here is a short story collection ready to enter the pantheon of Best Short Story Collections of All Time. Moore’s collection proves debut books can arrive fully realized and perfectly written. Her stories about Black men and women across the American South as they confront the complexities of home, identity, legacy, and love are immersive and hypnotic. All eleven will knock your socks off.
Mouth by Kerry Donoghue
From the publisher: Consumption drives everything, and what we do with our mouths reveals the hidden depths of our desires. MOUTH delves into the American obsession with consumption and the many ways we try to fill our emptiness. In these ten stories, characters are forced to face who they truly are when their hunger cannot be satisfied.
Donoghue expertly asks the hard questions of why we obsess and how habits impact every aspect of our lives. The characters she crafts throughout the ten stories feel like you’ve loved (and hated) them for years. Pitch perfect from start to finish and, if anything, come for the craft on how to make characters feel human.
A Place in the World by Bill Gaythwaite
From the publisher: In this poignant, engaging collection, Gaythwaite offers compassion and surprising optimism while celebrating astonishing resilience in the face of life’s persistent challenges.
Winner of the 2025 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, the first stories in Gaythwaite’s collection (the title story, “If You Only Knew,” and The Joy Factory”) are riveting portraits of voice-driven characters. Given the track record of the prize and his writing, the rest are sure to please.
The Sea Gives Up the Dead by Molly Olguín
From the publisher: A collection of stories sprinkled into the soil of fairy tales, left to take root and grow wild there.
These dozen stories remind me of some of my favorite recent stories. They’re genre-bending and left my jaw on the floor with how inventive they were.
Small Scale Sinners by Mahreen Sohail
From the publisher: An astonishing debut examining women’s lives in Pakistan and interrogating the burdens, and freedom, of love.
An eye-opening and soul-stirring collection about womanhood in Pakistan. Though Sohail’s book is slender, it carries immense heart, with every page brimming with emotional resonance.
Sympathy for Wild Girls by Demree McGhee
From the publisher: A debut collection of surreal, skin-piercing stories about the boundless longing of queer Black women.
A knockout selection of stories that move between reality and the surreal. McGhee takes readers to places rarely visited on the page and the stories dance between fever dreams and stark truths.
What Mennonite Girls Are Good For by Jennifer Sears
From the publisher: these stories consider how faith and identity intertwine, the cost of abandoning one’s cultural heritage, and the complicated longing for return.
Through eleven connected stories, Sears asks how faith influences and informs our lives. Each story is a subtle and nuanced look into a life that spans the globe but is always searching for one thing.