In their debut novel, Under a Fur Coat, Sonya Vatomsky explores ambition, obsession, folklore, and the uneasy boundary between the natural and supernatural. The novel follows Vivienne, a struggling photographer who travels to a Finnish island and becomes caught up in a mycologist’s search for a mythical bracket fungus.
Vatomsky is a writer whose work has appeared in Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Smithsonian Magazine. They were shortlisted for the PFD Queer Fiction Prize in 2024 and are also the author of the poetry collection Salt Is for Curing. Their first novel is set to be published by House of Anansi on March 23, 2027.
Debutiful is honored to reveal Under a Fur Coat’s cover, designed by Alysia Shewchuk, along with a Q&A with Vatomsky about its creation.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
Perhaps this is weird, but no! I have a great love for visual art but am just not very visual when it comes to my writing process – no moodboards, no plotting diagrams, no colour-coded anything. My ideal situation is to have a publisher whose creative vision I admire and who I can trust to bring Under a Fur Coat to life, so I feel very fortunate in that regard. I agonised over every word and bit of punctuation in the novel, but the cover was definitely a moment where I wanted to hand over the reins, if that makes sense.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
I actually had minimal involvement, which, given how beautiful the cover turned out, was maybe for the best! By the time I was looped in, everyone at House of Anansi was already in love with an early version of this cover. (Some of the other ideas included a dramatic red-and-black cover that reminded me of old horror movie posters, and a lush green cover that was abandoned when we discovered a forthcoming edition of an Olga Tokarczuk book was using the same source image!) The designer then did a few additional iterations, trying out different grasping hands and switching the background colour on some of the other covers. Ultimately, this version was the clear winner.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
I’m neurodivergent, and one of the things I’ve learned about myself is that my initial response to anything new is panic. Sorry, that’s the truth! I wear one of those fitness trackers on my wrist, and my heart rate jumped to something like 125 when I opened the email attachment. Thankfully, I’m very pleased with the cover. I think the designer did a fantastic job capturing the mood of the novel, and the mushrooms will be really eye-catching on a bookshelf. I can’t wait to hold a physical copy in my hands!
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
Under a Fur Coat is a queer, gothic novel about a struggling photographer who travels to a Finnish island hoping to revive her stalled career, only to find herself swept up in a disgraced mycologist’s search for a mythical bracket fungus. When she follows the mushroom hunt deeper into the forest, she must confront the darker aspects of both women’s ambitions as science and folklore become inexorably blurred. I think this cover captures that tension – between science and folklore – really well. It’s quite reminiscent of old-timey botanical illustrations but there’s a darkness to it, and the grasping hand hints at desire and obsession. I also love the sharp, eerie typeface!