Although Debutiful has primarily focused on novels and short story collections, poetry has started becoming a regular part of the site’s coverage (with poets making frequent appearances on the First Taste version of the podcast, reading selections from their collections).
Below are the twelve best debut collections Debutiful founder Adam Vitcavage read this year, some of which were on the Best Debut Books of 2025 list.
Continue reading “The Best Debut Poetry Collections of 2025”
Nothing makes me bawl like a book in which characters fiercely look after one another. Maybe that’s because my dad bailed on us when we were little, never to return. Or maybe it’s because my mother was a hospice nurse, setting an example of caretaking in the hardest moment a family will face. Or maybe, it’s good old-fashioned co-dependence–some of us find our worth through being needed. Whatever the reason, I’ve been drawn to literature of radical care since my earliest reading days.
My collection, The Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There, is a series of linked essays that span twenty years. The essays speak to each other about connection, isolation, community building, seeing, and of course, care– as ingrained habit, as rebellion, as a quiet fuck you to abandonments. Living things need other living things to care for us and about us, but that doesn’t mean it always happens.
Hanif Abduraquib says, “That anyone loves us at all is not a given.” We’re born alone and we die alone, this we all know. But in between we make thousands of daily choices about if we will give a damn and for whom and how: a rooster, a community, prisons, our kids, students, a neighbor. And from our caring stems our deepest failures and richest successes. Something else I’ve learned from reading and writing about care, my own especially, is that it’s imperfect, hard to sustain, and still, the only work that really matters in the end.
Continue reading “6 books about Radical Care by Jennifer Eli Bowen”
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Continue reading “First Taste: Cloud Delfina Cordona Reads From The Past is a Jean Jacket”
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Continue reading “First Taste: Isabella DeSendi reads from Someone Else’s Hunger”
Poets & Writers has announced the Fall 2025 fiction cohort for Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator for early-career writers. The program gives selected writers an opportunity to work with an experienced book publicist who will guide them in leveraging the opportunity presented by their first or second major book publication.
Continue reading “Announcing the Fall 2025 Poets & Writers Get the Word Out Fiction Cohort”
Rose Keating is an Irish writer who studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where she was a recipient of the Malcolm Bradbury Scholarship and the Curtis Brown Prize. She also won the Marian Keyes Young Writer Award, the Hot Press Write Here, Write Now Prize, and the Ted and Mary O’Regan Arts Bursary. In 2022, she received an Agility Award from the Irish Arts Council.
Her debut short story collection, Oddbody, features ten stories that feature women who defy societal norms in bizarrely satisfying and mind-bending ways.
We asked Keating to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that influenced her life and inspired her debut book.
Continue reading “My Reading Life: Oddbody author Rose Keating will always read vampire stories”
The second half of 2025 is chock-full of great debut voices, and below are 10 poetry collections we’re very excited for. Pre-ordering is vital to a book and a writer’s success. These are powerful and transformative poets worth your attention, many of whom are on small independent or university presses. Give these collections a look and discover a new voice you’ll fall in love with.
Continue reading “10 debut poetry collections you should pre-order right now”
Brian Gyamfi’s debut poetry collection, What God in the Kingdom of Bastards, will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press on September 9, 2025. The collection is available for pre-order.
Gyamfi is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, the Zell Fellowship at the University of Michigan, two Hopwood Awards, the Helen S. and John Wagner Prize, and the Michael R. Gutterman Award. He has been a finalist for the Poetry International Prize, the Oxford Poetry Prize, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the Hopwood Drama Award, and the National Poetry Series.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Gyamfi’s debut, designed by Alex Wolf, alongside a Q&A with the poet, offering a behind-the-scenes look at how this powerful cover came to life.
Continue reading “See the cover of What God in the Kingdom of Bastards by Brian Gyamfi”
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.
Continue reading “See the Cover for The Same Man by Bobby Elliott”
Mackenzie Kozak‘s no swaddle was selected for the Iowa Poetry Prize by Brenda Shaughnessy. The poetry collection “examines the complex question of whether or not to bear children.” Kozak’s other writing has appeared in Boston Review, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, jubilat, Missouri Review, Muzzle Magazine, Sixth Finch, THRUSH Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Kozak lives in Asheville, North Carolina. She also works as a therapist specializing in grief counseling.
We asked her to answer our recurring My Reading Life questionnaire so readers could get to know the books that inspired her throughout life.
Continue reading “My Reading Life: Mackenzie Kozak got the courage to write No Swaddle after reading Sheila Heti’s Motherhood”