Tag: books

News

See the Cover for The Same Man by Bobby Elliott

by AdamLeave a Comment on See the Cover for The Same Man by Bobby Elliott
See the Cover for The Same Man by Bobby Elliott

Bobby Elliott’s debut poetry collection, The Same Man, was chosen by Nate Marshall as the winner of the 2025 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. It will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press on September 9, 2025. The collection is available for pre-order.

Elliott’s previous poetry can be found in The Cortland Review, Diode, North American Review, ONLY POEMS, Poet Lore, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Earning his MFA from the University of Virginia, he was also a Poe/Faulkner Fellow and won the Kahn Prize for Teaching.

Debutiful is pleased to reveal the cover of Elliott’s debut (designed by Alex Wolfe) alongside a Q&A with the poet to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the cover came to be.

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Interviews

My Reading Life: Leafskin author Miranda Schmidt wishes she found Kissing the Witch in high school

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My Reading Life: Leafskin author Miranda Schmidt wishes she found Kissing the Witch in high school

Miranda Schmidt‘s debut novel Leafskin is about motherhood, queer love, and the environment. She is a PhD candidate at Bath Spa University and received their MFA from the University of Washington, and has published work in places like Electric Literature, Orion, Catapult, and elsewhere. She has received support from Lambda Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Writers and Bread Loaf Environmental Conference.

We asked her to answer our recurring My Reading Life questionnaire so readers can discover the books that shaped her life.

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News

The Art of the Author Website

by AdamLeave a Comment on The Art of the Author Website

While social media is king, and a writer’s aesthetic there will catch the eyes of Bookstagrammers and Booktokkers, the author’s website is still a vital resource many readers, writers, and media members use to research and connect with a book author.

Creating a webpage can seem overwhelming, but it’s actually easy to create a simple website thanks to resources like WordPress (which Debutiful hosts our website on), Squarespace, and Wix.

Trust me when I say simple is better.

Regardless of what source you use to create your website, here are up to five pages you need to make the lives of readers, writers, and media members easier.

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Interviews

Writing the Kingston Fossil Plant Catastophe: A Conversation with Jared Sullivan About Valley So Low

by AdamLeave a Comment on Writing the Kingston Fossil Plant Catastophe: A Conversation with Jared Sullivan About Valley So Low
Writing the Kingston Fossil Plant Catastophe: A Conversation with Jared Sullivan About Valley So Low

Jared Sullivan‘s debut Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe was named a Best Book by The New Yorker, Garden & Gun, and The Washington Independent Review of Books. But like many reported nonfiction debuts, I missed it here at Debutiful. I tend to cover novels, short story collections, essay collections, and memoirs. Still, sometimes a nonfiction title bubbles up to the top of my TBR pile and this book’s topic caught my eye.

In his book, Sullivan chronicles the aftermath of the catastrophic 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee. Following a small-town lawyer’s uphill battle against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the book exposes systemic negligence, the human cost of corporate greed, and the fight for justice in the face of insurmountable odds.

I needed to learn more about Valley So Low and how Sullivan wrote it. We chatted via email about his work, this book, and what’s next.

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News

The Art of a Cold Pitch

by Adam2 Comments on The Art of a Cold Pitch

At any given point, my inbox has 100+ emails from publicists I’ve worked with for over a decade, as well as submission form responses from writers I’ve never heard of. I also get sent books regularly, ranging from ones I expect and have asked for to ones writers cold-mail me.

It is no better for a writer to pitch their book via the online submission form or send me a book with a printed letter. I think it makes more economic sense to send an email, but that’s just my two cents.

I’ve spent some time thinking about why certain books catch my eye, and I want to focus on writers who pitch themselves because they either don’t have an assigned publicist at their publisher or they are on a small enough publisher that the writer has to hustle for themselves.

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Interviews, my reading life

My Reading Life: Hello Stranger author Manuel Betancourt needed more books about queer desire in his teens

by Adam1 Comment on My Reading Life: Hello Stranger author Manuel Betancourt needed more books about queer desire in his teens
My Reading Life: Hello Stranger author Manuel Betancourt needed more books about queer desire in his teens

Manuel Betancourt‘s debut book, The Male Gazed, somehow didn’t cross my path until well after it came out. The book, which takes a critical eye toward pop culture and queer desire, originally came out in 2023 and is now available in paperback. After reading and discovering his book, I invited him to the First Taste Reading Series to read and discuss his book.

His second book, Hello Stranger: Musings on Modern Intimacies, is out now. Publishers’ Weekly calls it “steamy and cerebral” while Kirkus says Betancourt is a “witty, intuitive observer of human behavior.” I 100% agree with both of those statements. While Debutiful is dedicated to debut books, but is also focusing on emerging and early career writers because when someone is a damn good writer, we don’t care when you discover them, as long as you do discover them.

Below the author answered our My Reading Life questionnaire, for you to learn about the books he was obsessed with, what helped him through puberty, and what he’s reading next.

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Interviews

I Wish I Had a Time Machine: Examining The Boundaries, Politics, and Nostolgia for the 2000s with Y2K author Colette Shade

by AdamLeave a Comment on I Wish I Had a Time Machine: Examining The Boundaries, Politics, and Nostolgia for the 2000s with Y2K author Colette Shade
I Wish I Had a Time Machine: Examining The Boundaries, Politics, and Nostolgia for the 2000s with Y2K author Colette Shade

In her debut book, Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything, Colette Shade explores how the Y2K era – which she defines as running from 1997-2008, shaped our future in ways we’re still trying to understand. As a millennial myself who started and finished college in the middle of the Great Recession, this book hit close to home. It helped me understand the hope I felt as a child and the despair I’ve felt since.

In 2025, I wanted to bring back long-form conversations to the Debutiful site, a reminder of a form of media that dominated long before podcasts took over our lives, and knew I wanted Colette Shade to be the first. This conversation, which was edited and condensed, explores why Shade wrote this book and reflects on Y2K’s optimism, disillusionment, and enduring impact on contemporary life.

Continue reading “I Wish I Had a Time Machine: Examining The Boundaries, Politics, and Nostolgia for the 2000s with Y2K author Colette Shade” →