T Clark is a writer whose short fiction have appeared in Joyland, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, The Offing, and Fourteen Hills. They received their MFA from Indiana University and support from Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, New York; the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; the Lambda Literary Foundation; the Elizabeth George Foundation; the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing; and the Vermont Studio Center.
Their debut story collection All This Want (and I Can’t Get None) explores the feverish hunger and dizzying pleasure of girlhood and queer coming-of-age in a small town. It will be published by One World on June 23, 2026 and is available for pre-order now.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover, which was designed by Michael Morris, along with a Q&A with Clark about its creation below.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
Since I was a kid, I imagined the book would be some combination of hot pink, black, and white. That color palette has always spoken to me. There’s a story in the collection, “The Girl Gets Whatever She Wants,” which I once thought would be the title. It’s playful (spoiler: she does not get whatever she wants — and if she does, at what cost?), and pairing that false promise with the gendering of pink felt right.
When I began investigating my gender identity more seriously and started using they/them pronouns, we decided on the current title, All This Want (and I Can’t Get None), to attempt to lessen the inevitable misgendering I would soon face. I was still intuitively drawn to hot pink, but otherwise didn’t have a clear vision for the cover.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
I collected covers that spoke to me and saved them to a Pinterest board. Lots of bright, bold colors, large typefaces, single images, sharp lines. Michael Morris, the designer, used those references to develop a few initial concepts, and the team narrowed them down to several strong options.
A version of the current cover was the one I kept returning to, and the one that seemed to generate the most excitement with the team. The biggest question became the color palette. We had some very fun possibilities, some just shy of jarring (which I fully mean as a compliment), and ultimately we landed on this one.
I say “we” because it was very much a conversation with my agent, my editors, and the team at One World. I’ve heard stories of authors having little input on their covers, and I feel lucky that wasn’t my experience.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
Exciting. I’m really happy where we landed. It’s still a little shocking; this thing I’ve imagined for years suddenly has a concrete image. I made it my phone wallpaper to let the shock settle. Sort of like exposure therapy, except I’m very happy to be exposed.
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
Much of the book lives inside the heads of the characters. They think but don’t speak, fantasize but can’t act. I see something similar in the figure half-hidden behind the big, bold text. She seems suspended in an ambiguous space between coming and going, like many of the characters caught between young adulthood and adulthood.
They are girls who want to be women: brave but scared. Catlike, they hide and watch and wait before they act. I can almost imagine the figure whispering to someone (the reader?) from behind the wall of the book, forgetting she’s meant to be on the cover at all.
It suggests secrets, hidden truths, distraction. The moment before you step out and make yourself known. Or the moment you decide to stay hidden instead.