Yoojin Grace Wuertz’s Welcome Home, Stranger is a YA novel about family, identity, and the complicated bond between two second cousins raised worlds apart. Yeji grew up in North Korea, while Ellie grew up in North Jersey, and when the two live together in Leonia for a year, they must navigate the histories, expectations, and cultural differences shaping their shared family.
Wuertz is the author of Everything Belongs to Us. Welcome Home, Stranger will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers on May 25, 2027.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Welcome Home, Stranger, illustrated by Mozza with art direction by Aurora Parlagreco. Below, Wuertz discusses the cover’s layered depiction of Yeji and Ellie, its play with scale and cultural artifacts, and how the final design captures both the friction and intimacy at the heart of the novel.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
Once I had title, which for me comes after all the writing is done, it was easier to visualize the tone of the ideal cover. Certainly I hoped the cover would convey the multi-layered bond between the main characters, Yeji and Ellie, who are second cousins who grew up in North Korea and North Jersey, respectively, before meeting and living together for a year in Leonia, NJ. More intangibly, I hoped the art would balance the gravitas of their family’s intergenerational rifts with the contemporary immediacy of teenage sisterhood. This cover, by South Korean artist, Mozza, exceeded my hopes and expectations in every way. It puts the girls front and center in a visual landscape that mirrors the world they are trying to decipher and reconcile. There’s a lot to take in so you can linger with the details, but the overall impact is focused and vibrant.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
I was so lucky to be included every step of the way alongside my FSG editor, Mekisha Telfer, Art Director, Aurora Parlagreco, and cover artist, Mozza. Early in the process, Mekisha shared two artists that the art department had identified as their strongest options. It didn’t escape my notice that both candidates are South Korean—what a joy to be seen and supported by being matched with artists who would implicitly understand the themes of the book. While the team genuinely loved both artists, we decided to move forward with Mozza because of his unique, layered compositions that pack meaning into every detail while remaining distinctly contemporary and YA.
To begin, Mozza sent us four black/white cover drafts—all very different—and we chose our favorite composition. Next, we saw something like ten different color story options. We landed on this lavender, jet black, cloud and umber combination because it was instantly engaging and sophisticated while underscoring the friction in the girls’ relationship. Once the color story was set, it was a matter of fine-tuning the details within the image. I loved contributing the personalization that represents each character. To work with an artist and publishing team that was so responsive to my feedback was truly a gift.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
I think seeing the cover really convinced me that I had written a YA novel. That sounds funny and hyperbolic—but it’s true! A book’s cover, perhaps even more than the title, is the visceral introduction of a work to the world, and I feel honored to be introduced with such style, generosity, and precision. Seeing this final cover, which is strikingly youthful, electric yet vulnerable in just the way that age feels—I was so proud to see it. I think the cover gives you a promise that you will get to know these girls, and get to know them deeply. I hope that feels exciting to an adult, young adult or teen reader.
How does the cover work to convey what the book is all about?
There’s so much meaning layered into the composition and details. I mentioned many of them above, but other details: the girls are facing away from each other but touching back to back, still closely connected despite their divergent points of view. There’s aspects of water in this cover that represent crossings and gatherings. There are cultural and technological artifacts that clash in space and time, like the iPhone in Ellie’s hand contrasting with the DVDs on Yeji’s side. You’ll see the bingsu that’s building-sized next to high school lockers that look like monuments. And of course, the looming Dansaekhwa canvas representing the past hiding in plain sight. All of this will make sense when you are able to read the book! Finally, so much is embedded into the intentional variations, or “errors,” of scale. Different memories and preoccupations are disproportionately important to each of the girls, and they have to find a way to see and reorient themselves in order to understand how each is occupying their shared space.
This is a small detail but I knew we’d chosen the right artist when I saw this cover from its first draft. The American cousin, Ellie, is shorter than the Korean cousin, Yeji. That was in the book and has a subtle but important significance. Mozza had taken the time to read the novel closely and clock those tiny but meaningful details that I hoped the most devoted readers would catch. When somebody takes the time to notice, those are the moments that are so satisfying to a writer!