Category: my reading life

Interviews, my reading life

Nita Noveno Finds Freedom in Breaking Form

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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.

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Interviews, my reading life

Drew Buxton Reads for Voice, Craft and the Swerve

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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” →
Interviews, my reading life

The Books That Taught K.W. Oxnard to Embrace the Dark and Strange

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The Books That Taught K.W. Oxnard to Embrace the Dark and Strange

K.W. Oxnard’s The Leg in Question is a collection of fifteen stories exploring the strange, unsettling, and often darkly funny ways our bodies can betray us. Moving from post-World War I New York to pandemic-era Savannah, from Maine to Malaysia, the collection brings doctors and patients together at the uneasy intersection of medicine, mortality, obsession and desire.

Oxnard’s fiction has appeared in Story, Columbia Journal Online, Tahoma Literary Review and elsewhere. Her story “Belle of the Ball” won the 2024 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival Fiction Contest, and her work has been recognized by the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, CRAFT Flash Fiction Contest and other awards.

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

Continue reading “The Books That Taught K.W. Oxnard to Embrace the Dark and Strange” →
Interviews, my reading life

How ‘Are You My Mother?’ Followed Leslie Bazzett All the Way to ‘Mia’

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How ‘Are You My Mother?’ Followed Leslie Bazzett All the Way to ‘Mia’

Leslie Bazzett is a writer whose fiction has appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Carolina Quarterly, West Branch, and elsewhere. A finalist for a Rona Jaffe Award and recipient of the NER Award for Emerging Writers, she now makes her debut with Mia, a stylish, unsettling work of psychological suspense about reinvention, obsession, and the dangerous allure of becoming someone else.

Set in San Miguel de Allende, Mia follows Sally, an American living in Mexico for a year with her husband and children, after she falls under the spell of Louise, a glamorous and severe older expat. What begins as an intense friendship takes a stranger turn when Louise starts calling Sally “Mia” and introducing her as her daughter. As Sally embraces the possibility of a new identity while hiding the relationship from her husband, the boundaries between performance and reality begin to collapse, turning the novel into a twisted exploration of mothers and daughters, self-invention, and the stories we tell about ourselves.

We asked Bazzett to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.

Continue reading “How ‘Are You My Mother?’ Followed Leslie Bazzett All the Way to ‘Mia’” →
Interviews, my reading life

Leila Renee was shaped by Toni Morrison, Goosebumps, and The Phantom Tollbooth

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Leila Renee was shaped by Toni Morrison, Goosebumps, and The Phantom Tollbooth

Leila Renee is a writer whose fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction and a Fulbright Award, and an MFA graduate of Syracuse University, she now makes her debut with Soft Spots, a darkly funny, emotionally incisive novel about family estrangement, obsession, and the difficult work of forgiveness.

Soft Spots follows recent college graduate Robin Clarke after she flees her abusive family for a teaching job in South Bend, Indiana. As Robin becomes increasingly consumed by her dysfunctional school, her seemingly perfect roommate, and the possibility of reconciliation with her ailing father, the novel explores memory, self-sabotage, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

We asked Renee to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.

Continue reading “Leila Renee was shaped by Toni Morrison, Goosebumps, and The Phantom Tollbooth” →
Interviews, my reading life

Avigayl Sharp is bad at writing book lists… but will give you a Damn Good Writing syllabus

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Avigayl Sharp is bad at writing book lists… but will give you a Damn Good Writing syllabus

Avigayl Sharp is a writer whose fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, New England Review, and elsewhere. A former writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and an MFA graduate of the Michener Center for Writers, she now makes her debut with Offseason, a novel as intellectually fearless as it is emotionally unflinching.

Offseason, which was longlisted for the 2026 First Novel Prize, follows a fiercely observant yet deeply unreliable narrator teaching at an elite girls’ boarding school, where obsessive lectures, messy entanglements, and unresolved trauma blur the line between memory and self-mythology. By turns darkly funny, provocative, and psychologically incisive, the novel examines the stories we tell ourselves about pain, identity, and whether art or love can ever rewrite the past.

We asked Sharp to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.

Continue reading “Avigayl Sharp is bad at writing book lists… but will give you a Damn Good Writing syllabus” →
Interviews, my reading life

Amy Chozick on With Friends Like You, Cormac McCarthy, and Great Writing

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Amy Chozick on With Friends Like You, Cormac McCarthy, and Great Writing

Amy Chozick is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Her debut novel, With Friends Like You, follows a struggling new mother whose obsessive search for her long-lost college roommate draws her into a hidden world of sex work, billionaire escorts, and long-buried secrets. Darkly funny and psychologically sharp, the novel explores friendship, motherhood, identity, and the dangerous line between devotion and obsession.

We asked Chozick to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.

Continue reading “Amy Chozick on With Friends Like You, Cormac McCarthy, and Great Writing” →
Interviews, my reading life

The Flayed Man Author Chloe Lauter Reveals the Weird Stories That Made Her a Writer

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The Flayed Man Author Chloe Lauter Reveals the Weird Stories That Made Her a Writer

Set against the Mojave Desert and Las Vegas, Chloe Lauter‘s debut novel, The Flayed Man, blends horror, dark fantasy, and family drama into a gripping story of survival and sacrifice. Ellis Karsten spends her days caring for patients in the emergency room and her nights searching for blood to keep her family’s monstrous curse at bay. But when her uncle disappears and her mother’s worsening dementia becomes entangled with terrifying warnings about an ancient creature known as the Flayed Man, Ellis must confront the possibility that the greatest threat to her family is no myth at all.

We asked Lauter to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.

Continue reading “The Flayed Man Author Chloe Lauter Reveals the Weird Stories That Made Her a Writer” →
Interviews, my reading life

Jayson Greene wishes he had gotten into literary sci-fi and speculative fiction earlier in life

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Jayson Greene wishes he had gotten into literary sci-fi and speculative fiction earlier in life

When Jayson Greene‘s debut novel, UnWorld, came out last year, he appeared on our First Taste Reading Series podcast, where he read an excerpt from the novel.

The book, out now in paperback, follows four interconnected lives after the mysterious death of a young man in a near-future where human consciousness can be digitally replicated, and AI has begun to reshape what it means to be alive.

We asked Greene to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his writing.

Continue reading “Jayson Greene wishes he had gotten into literary sci-fi and speculative fiction earlier in life” →
Interviews, my reading life

Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life

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Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life

Ben Reeves’s debut novel has already earned significant recognition before publication, with an early draft of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt winning the 2024 Bath Novel Award. Now, the UK author makes his debut with a novel that asks one of literature’s oldest questions through an unexpected narrator.

In Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Death isn’t a terrifying force but a quiet, compassionate presence named Travis, who spends his days comforting people in their final moments. But when he befriends a midwife and her young daughter across the hall, he begins to discover what it truly means to live. Tender, philosophical, and quietly hopeful, Reeves’ novel is a moving meditation on grief, love, and the fleeting beauty of being alive.

Reeves answered the recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his debut novel.

Continue reading “Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life” →