Locals, Jared Jackson‘s debut short story collection, explores friendship, family, belonging, and the complexities of growing up in working-class Hartford, Connecticut. Across eight interconnected stories, Jackson follows young people navigating love, grief, and survival in a city shaped by inequality, revealing the tenderness beneath their bravado and the bonds that hold communities together.
Jackson is a Hartford-born writer whose fiction has appeared in The Yale Review, Guernica, Kenyon Review, and The Best American Short Stories. Viking will publish Locals on May 18, 2027.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Locals, designed by Jason Ramirez and featuring “Knuckle Sandwich” by artist Lynthia Edwards, courtesy of Richard Beavers Gallery. Below, Jackson discusses the collaborative design process, the significance of the artwork’s fragmented imagery, and how the cover captures the collection’s exploration of childhood, identity, and community.
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