Luke Larkin Thinks You Should Read Octavia Butler Early and Often

Luke Larkin’s The Unheld is a horror Western set in the haunted Montana Territory, where twelve-year-old Charlie sets out to rescue her father after a nightmarish creature drags him into the wilderness. Joined by an Englishman connected to a mysterious occult society and a Northern Cheyenne policeman living in exile, Charlie ventures into a landscape populated by strange creatures and supernatural threats. Blending Western grit with horror, The Unheld explores loneliness, alienation, and the complicated bonds that hold people together.

Larkin is a queer writer living in Big Sky Country, where he received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana. The Unheld is his debut novel.

Larkin answered our My Reading Life Q&A about the books and writers that have shaped him as a reader and writer.

Continue reading “Luke Larkin Thinks You Should Read Octavia Butler Early and Often”

See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella

See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella

In her debut short story collection, Ripples into the Wild, Abby Manzella explores man-made disasters, climate change, the pandemic, and imagined future catastrophes. Moving between realism and the speculative, the collection features everything from children telling ghost stories to characters confronting actual monsters while considering what might exist beyond loss and grief.

Manzella is a Pushcart Prize winner whose writing has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Literary Hub, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Her debut collection is set to be published by Cornerstone Press on February 23, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Ripples into the Wild’s cover, designed by Paige Biever and Ross Tangedal, along with a Q&A with Manzella about its creation.

Continue reading “See the cover for Ripples into the Wild by Abby Manzella”

See the cover and read an exclusive excerpt of The Joplin Horror by Jason Kaleko

Debutiful is excited to reveal the cover of The Joplin Horror, the debut novel from award-winning screenwriter Jason Kaleko. This cinematic psychological horror follows a crew of graverobbers who descend into an ancient mausoleum expecting an easy score, only to find an impossible labyrinth, disappearing memories, and something hunting them from just beyond the light.

Perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski, Chuck Wendig, and Paul Tremblay, The Joplin Horror is a claustrophobic descent into buried trauma, fractured reality, and a place that seems determined to keep its visitors forever. It will be published by DAW on May 25, 2027. It is available for preorder now.

Debutiful is honored to reveal The Joplin Horror‘s cover, designed by Adam Auerbach, along with an exclusive excerpt from the novel.

Continue reading “See the cover and read an exclusive excerpt of The Joplin Horror by Jason Kaleko”

See the cover for All of Us Wildflowers by Tria Wen

See the cover for All of Us Wildflowers by Tria Wen

Tria Wen’s All of Us Wildflowers is an intergenerational memoir about grief, inheritance, and breaking the cycle of women living for others before themselves. Following her mother’s death, Wen begins dismantling the careful life she has built, including her seemingly perfect marriage. Searching for guidance in her mother’s journals and letters, she discovers versions of the woman she never knew: an immigrant who left part of herself behind, an artist constrained by the role of housewife, and a woman whose unrealized dreams continue to echo through her daughter’s life. Moving between generations and across time, All of Us Wildflowers asks where a mother’s story ends and a daughter’s begins.

Wen is a California-based writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, and Narratively, among others. She is a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award and Chautauqua Janus Prize and a recipient of the California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellowship. All of Us Wildflowers will be published by Counterpoint Press on March 9, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of All of Us Wildflowers, designed and art directed by Nicole Caputo. Below, Wen discusses the wildflowers and other visual motifs that inspired her, how her mother’s journals helped give the memoir its title, and how the final design captures a life that can be fragmented and messy while still remaining whole.

Continue reading “See the cover for All of Us Wildflowers by Tria Wen”

Nita Noveno Finds Freedom in Breaking Form

Nita Noveno Finds Freedom in Breaking Form

Nita Noveno’s Mud on the Moon is a hybrid memoir that explores the obscured past of her Filipino immigrant father, who arrived in the United States in 1928. Alternating between Noveno’s own coming-of-age story and imagined chapters from her father’s life, the book fills the gaps between what was known, remembered and left unsaid. Blending personal and historical narratives, Mud on the Moon considers how family, memory and identity are shaped by the stories passed between generations.

Noveno teaches composition and literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and is the founder and host emeritus of the New York City reading series Sunday Salon. Her work has appeared in Mãnoa, Identity Theory, Brink, Hippocampus, The Hunger, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s Open City and The Margins, and elsewhere.

For My Reading Life, Noveno spoke with Debutiful about the books and writers that have shaped her as a reader and writer.

Continue reading “Nita Noveno Finds Freedom in Breaking Form”

Drew Buxton Reads for Voice, Craft and the Swerve

Drew Buxton Reads for Voice, Craft and the Swerve

Drew Buxton’s Daytona Teddy Riggs follows Teddy “Daytona” Riggs, a former high school football star in 1996 Corpus Christi who is determined to win the World’s Strongest Man competition. Cast out from his oil-rich family and devoted to the teachings of a self-help guru, Teddy’s obsessive pursuit of strength begins to unravel when a relationship with a local bodybuilder forces him to confront the insecurities beneath the muscle. Buxton’s debut novel blends outrageous comedy and satire with an exploration of masculinity, privilege, mental illness and obsession.

Buxton is the author of the story collection So Much Heart, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters’ Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction. His work has appeared in Southwest Review, Joyland, Vice, and elsewhere.

For My Reading Life, Buxton spoke with Debutiful about the books and writers that have shaped him as a reader and writer.

Continue reading “Drew Buxton Reads for Voice, Craft and the Swerve”

See the cover for Overwintered by Elina Katrin

See the cover for Overwintered by Elina Katrin

Overwintered, Elina Katrin‘s debut poetry collection, explores the body as a site of memory, displacement, illness, and renewal. Moving between Syria, Russia, and the United States, Katrin traces the complicated experience of inhabiting the immigrant body, the female body, and the ailing body while searching for connection and belonging. Through recurring images of flowers, dreams, and changing seasons, the collection considers what we inherit, what we carry alone, and what it means to emerge from winter transformed.

Overwintered will be published on February 1, 2027, by Trio House Press and is available for preorder now.

Elina Katrin is a poet and writer whose work explores migration, memory, womanhood, and the body. Her debut poetry collection, Overwintered, is forthcoming from Trio House Press.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Overwintered, designed by Coral Sue and featuring Lovis Corinth’s Women with Lilies in a Green House, along with a Q&A with Katrin about its creation.

Continue reading “See the cover for Overwintered by Elina Katrin”

8 Graphic Debut Memoirs That Quietly Blew Up Everyone’s Expectations of What a Comic Could Be

8 Graphic Debut Memoirs That Quietly Blew Up Everyone’s Expectations of What a Comic Could Be

When I wrote my first book, The Nightingales, I knew I wanted it to feel different from the graphic novels I’d encountered, both in how it was written and how it looked. It’s based on a true story: in 1985, my father invited a dying coworker and his two dogs to move into our home. The experience brought out both the best and worst in my family, teaching us that kindness can be as complicated as it is transformative.

Unlike most cartoonists, I didn’t grow up reading comics. In fact, until a few years ago—well into my fifties—I don’t think I’d ever picked one up. I assumed graphic novels were mostly about superheroes, first crushes, and adolescent angst. Instead, I discovered books that tackled grief, family, history, identity, illness, and memory with astonishing originality.

Every book on this list expanded my sense of what a graphic memoir could be. They aren’t just beautifully written; they each invent a visual language uniquely suited to the story they’re telling. Reading them inspired me to take risks with my own writing, artwork, and even the way the book itself was constructed. Coincidentally, many of them are also their authors’ first full-length books.

Continue reading “8 Graphic Debut Memoirs That Quietly Blew Up Everyone’s Expectations of What a Comic Could Be”