When Can I Start? How to Lose a Job and Gain a Personality, the latest memoir-in-essays by Joseph Lezza, is a darkly funny exploration of unemployment, identity, and the absurdities of the American job market. Framed as a board game, Lezza chronicles years of job applications, rejections, side gigs, and existential crises while questioning why we tie so much of who we are to what we do for a living.
Lezza is the author of I’m Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on Loss, and his work has appeared in Slate, Longreads, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. When Can I Start? will be published by Vine Leaves Press on January 27, 2027.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of When Can I Start?, designed by Jessica Bell. Below, Lezza discusses transforming the chaos of unemployment into a board game, drawing inspiration from classic tabletop games, and how the cover’s playful yet sinister imagery captures the unpredictable experience of searching for work.
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