Tag: debut

Interviews

Devyn Defoe on Burnside, Lemony Snicket, and Writing the End Times

by Adam1 Comment on Devyn Defoe on Burnside, Lemony Snicket, and Writing the End Times
Devyn Defoe on Burnside, Lemony Snicket, and Writing the End Times

In Burnside, Devyn Defoe paints an end-of-days portrait of two young women in California that manages to make you laugh, break your heart, and double-check that you’re actually awake and not in some absurdist hallucination. Referred to as a “signature chronicle of our American endtimes” by author Chang-rae Lee, Defoe’s unforgettable characters navigate patriarchy, climate crises, and a whole host of issues for which we can thank late-stage capitalism. 

I sat down with Devyn Defoe to discuss how Burnside came to be, the enduring influence of Lemony Snicket, and the endless rewards of bookselling. 

Continue reading “Devyn Defoe on Burnside, Lemony Snicket, and Writing the End Times” →
Interviews

Stacey Yu on Love, Magic, and Coming of Age in New York City

by AdamLeave a Comment on Stacey Yu on Love, Magic, and Coming of Age in New York City
Stacey Yu on Love, Magic, and Coming of Age in New York City

Kitten by Stacey Yu, one of Debutiful’s Most Anticipated Debut Books, follows protagonist Katie, who is fresh out of university and desperate not to enter the adult world quite yet. When she goes to the Hamptons with her boyfriend James, she becomes instantly enamored with his cat Silver. 

Across Katie’s dynamics with James and Silver, we understand the wound of her upbringing: her enmeshment with her mother, her anxious attachment, and her tendency to seek what is familiar over what is healthy or good. In Silver, she sees the potential for the eternal and pure childhood that she so craves, but she also knows that this desire is impossible.

Katie wants to be both left alone and folded into the world. She wants to be free of responsibility but she also wants to have purpose and grounding. Ultimately, she has to set herself (and Silver) free from these impossible oppositions, and choose a path forward. 

Stacey and I spoke about how this tender coming-of-age novel came to be, and the redemptive quality of small, simple choices. The conversation below has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Continue reading “Stacey Yu on Love, Magic, and Coming of Age in New York City” →
inside the collection, Interviews

Inside the Collection: Emily Doyle dissects Please Don’t Touch the Body

by AdamLeave a Comment on Inside the Collection: Emily Doyle dissects Please Don’t Touch the Body
Inside the Collection: Emily Doyle dissects Please Don’t Touch the Body

What makes a great short story collection? In Debutiful’s latest Q&A series, Inside the Collection, short story writers will take readers through their writing, editing, and sequencing of their debut short story collection.

In Please Don’t Touch the Body, Emily Doyle delivers eleven inventive, genre-bending stories that explore the vulnerabilities, contradictions, and strange absurdities of modern life. Moving effortlessly between the surreal and the deeply human, the collection follows characters searching for agency, intimacy, and belonging—from a woman reclaiming herself through an anonymous advice column to Ronald Reagan reincarnated as a puppy and a young woman untangling the expectations of her religious upbringing from her own desires. By turns funny, unsettling, and emotionally resonant, Please Don’t Touch the Body announces Doyle as a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction. Doyle is also the author of the forthcoming novel Encounter. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, The Sun, and elsewhere, and she has received numerous honors, including the Abraham Lincoln Polonsky Endowed Award and the Bread Loaf–Rona Jaffe Foundation Participant Scholarship. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at UC Riverside.

In our latest Inside the Collection Q&A, Doyle takes readers inside her debut short story collection, Please Don’t Touch the Body.

Continue reading “Inside the Collection: Emily Doyle dissects Please Don’t Touch the Body” →
Book Covers, News

See the cover for Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud

by AdamLeave a Comment on See the cover for Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud
See the cover for Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud

Untranslatable, the debut memoir by Lara Vergnaud, traces the intersections of language, identity, and everyday life through the eyes of a literary translator. As Vergnaud brings novels across linguistic and cultural borders, she navigates her own experiences with illness, infertility, marriage, and the lingering sense of unbelonging shaped by a life between countries and languages. Weaving together personal reflection with the art of translation, the memoir explores what it means to remain invisible while giving voice to others, and how language can both reveal and obscure the self.

Untranslatable will be published on February 16, 2027, by Catapult and is available for preorder now.

Lara Vergnaud is a writer and literary translator specializing in North African literature. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and Words Without Borders, and she has translated more than a dozen novels, including The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, which was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Born in Tunisia, raised in the United States, she now lives in southern France.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Untranslatable, designed by Victoria Maxfield with art direction from Nicole Caputo, along with a Q&A with Vergnaud about its creation.

Continue reading “See the cover for Untranslatable by Lara Vergnaud” →
Interviews

How Andrea Uptmor’s The New People Reimagines Home, Loss, and Belonging

by AdamLeave a Comment on How Andrea Uptmor’s The New People Reimagines Home, Loss, and Belonging
How Andrea Uptmor’s The New People Reimagines Home, Loss, and Belonging

The lives of two families collide in a most intriguing and shocking way in Andrea Uptmor’s darkly delightful debut novel, The New People. Faced with foreclosure and falling victim to the ruse of a real estate scammer, Charlotte and Dirk Deniison lose the place they called home faster than they can gather their belongings. The new owners, Emma and Rachel, settle into the house and what should’ve been a new start to an easy new life, only to discover that things aren’t always what they seem. The New People is a deeply moving novel that explores themes of love, loss, and community, and what it really means to feel at home.

Andrea Uptmor is a writer and editor who received her MFA in Fiction at the University of Minnesota. Her short fiction has been published in McSweeney’s, PANK, and The Masters Review, among others.

Continue reading “How Andrea Uptmor’s The New People Reimagines Home, Loss, and Belonging” →
Interviews

The Many Lives of Lizzie Buehler: Translation, Medicine, and The Obsessed

by AdamLeave a Comment on The Many Lives of Lizzie Buehler: Translation, Medicine, and The Obsessed
The Many Lives of Lizzie Buehler: Translation, Medicine, and The Obsessed

There’s a distinct thrill in reading a novel that makes you feel seen, mocked, and entirely transfixed. Lizzie Buehler’s The Obsessed does exactly that, delivering a sharp-witted and offbeat tale of obsession that I devoured in less than twenty-four hours. Adam of Debutiful calls the novel “sad, weird, and horny,” and I imagine most readers will relate to Astrid, the novel’s endearingly neurotic heroine, as she projects her literary and romantic obsessions onto real people.

I had a blast chatting with Buehler about the glorious voyeurism of autofiction, giving yourself permission to drop out of a PhD program, navigating the relentless pressure to produce, and the refreshing collaborative spirit of the international translation community.

Continue reading “The Many Lives of Lizzie Buehler: Translation, Medicine, and The Obsessed” →
Interviews, News

Hallie Elizabeth Newton on Agnes Lives!, Millennial Despair, and Writing the Messiness of Real Life

by AdamLeave a Comment on Hallie Elizabeth Newton on Agnes Lives!, Millennial Despair, and Writing the Messiness of Real Life
Hallie Elizabeth Newton on Agnes Lives!, Millennial Despair, and Writing the Messiness of Real Life

Hallie Elizabeth Newton‘s Agnes Lives! is as stylish as it is unsettling, following a young woman over the course of a single day as she searches for someone willing to kill her. Set in a vividly rendered 2014 New York City, the novel blends biting humor with profound despair, using Agnes’s wandering consciousness to examine privilege, performance, mental illness, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. It’s a formally daring debut that refuses easy answers while remaining compulsively readable.

I caught up with Newton to discuss writing a novel from the inside out, how screenwriting shaped her approach to fiction, capturing a specific moment in New York’s cultural history, and why embracing life’s messiness became the book’s guiding principle.

Continue reading “Hallie Elizabeth Newton on Agnes Lives!, Millennial Despair, and Writing the Messiness of Real Life” →