See the cover for The Light in Other Houses by Anna Marschalk-Burns

See the cover for The Light in Other Houses by Anna Marschalk-Burns

In her debut novel, The Light in Other Houses, Anna Marschalk-Burns explores motherhood, infertility, desire, and found family. The novel follows Zoe, who returns to her hometown of Minneapolis after years of failed fertility treatments and finds herself drawn into the lives of her new neighbor Danni and her five-year-old daughter.

Marschalk-Burns is a graduate of the Brooklyn College MFA program, where she received a Truman Capote fellowship and the Himan Brown Award. Her short fiction has appeared in SLICE, Joyland, and Literary Hub. Her debut novel is set to be published by Zando on March 9, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal The Light in Other Houses’s cover, designed by Lucy Kim and featuring a painting by Jeremy Miranda, along with a Q&A with Marschalk-Burns about its creation.

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See the cover for Under a Fur Coat by Sonya Vatomsky

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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See the cover for Sensual World by Lauren Friedlander

See the cover for Sensual World by Lauren Friedlander

Lauren Friedlander’s debut novel, Sensual World, is a surreal Midwestern campus gothic about ambition, obsession, and the terrifying lengths we’ll go in the name of art. Seventeen-year-old Bet Cowl escapes her remote Kansas hometown after discovering the manuscript of a supposedly cursed play and earning admission to the infamous acting conservatory founded by its playwright, Una Flood. There, Bet falls into an intense friendship with former child star Helen as the two endure increasingly extreme demands on their bodies, minds, and relationship. Queer, strange, and darkly funny, Sensual World asks what happens when artistic devotion begins to look a lot like self-destruction.

Friedlander is a writer and graphic designer from Kansas who now lives in New York. She is a recipient of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Sensual World will be published by Catapult on March 23, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Sensual World, designed by Victoria Maxfield and art-directed by Nicole Caputo. Below, Friedlander discusses the visual moodboard that accompanied her through eight years of writing, the artistic references that shaped the novel’s strange world, and the uncanny experience of finally seeing her book with a face of its own.

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See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley

See the cover for Talented and Gifted by Kelly Kearsley

Kelly Kearsley’s debut novel, Talented and Gifted, is a funny, sharp look at failure, reinvention, and the strange promises of startup culture. Molly Wells was once the queen of mom blogging—until an ill-advised post about her ex-husband’s affair tanked her career. Three years later, a ghostwriting gig at a buzzy Portland startup that makes apps and assessments for gifted kids offers Molly a shot at professional redemption. But as the company’s money troubles, questionable personalities, and hidden agendas pile up, Molly’s midlife reboot becomes increasingly complicated.

Kearsley began her career as a business journalist before becoming a ghostwriter for Fortune 500 tech and finance companies. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, Forbes, and elsewhere, and she writes the humor newsletter Does That Make Sense? Talented and Gifted will be published by Grand Central Publishing on April 27, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Talented and Gifted’s cover, designed by Sandra Chiu, along with a Q&A with Kearsley about its creation.

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See the cover for Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring by Jared Lemus

See the cover for Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring by Jared Lemus

Jared Lemus’s debut novel, Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring, is a suspenseful, mythic story about survival, devotion, greed, and the inescapable pull of the past. In the remote Guatemalan town of Huecotenango, outcasts and wanderers have built lives alongside residents with extraordinary abilities, including a woman who can shapeshift into a jaguar, a healer who absorbs the ailments of others, and a young woman indebted to the god of the underworld. When two brothers arrive after a crash on the outskirts of town, their illicit work threatens to disrupt the community and sets its residents on a dangerous collision course.

Lemus is the author of Guatemalan Rhapsody, which won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Story, and elsewhere. Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring will be published by Ecco on April 20, 2027.

Debutiful is honored to reveal Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring’s cover, designed by Vivian Rowe, along with a Q&A with Lemus about its creation.

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