We’ve been asking writers “What’s on your Damn Good Writing syllabus” during their My Reading Life questionnaires. Here are five of those writers sharing the books they consider to be out of this world.
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The following is an excerpt from Make Sure You Die Screaming by Zee Carlstrom. They grew up in Illinois and now work as a creative director in Brooklyn. You can subscribe to their Substack, which needs exactly two monthly subscribers to pay for Carlstrom’s NBA League Pass subscription.
Make Sure You Die Screaming follows a nonbinary narrator who, after a corporate burnout and personal trauma, steals a car and leaves Chicago to search for their missing conspiracy theorist father in Arkansas. Teaming up with a chaotic companion, they navigate a surreal, emotional road trip through America’s ideological and economic divides. As they confront their past and the scars left by capitalism, gender expectations, and family dysfunction, the journey becomes both literal and deeply psychological. It is now available to purchase from Flatiron Books.
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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.
Continue reading “My Reading Life: Leafskin author Miranda Schmidt wishes she found Kissing the Witch in high school”
The following is an excerpt from Optional Practical Training by Shubha Sunder. She is the author of the story collection Boomtown Girl, which won the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award. Originally from Bangalore, India, she now lives in Boston with her family.
Told through a series of conversations, Optional Practical Training follows Pavitra, a young Indian woman navigating her post-college year in the U.S. on a student work visa. As she teaches math and physics at a private high school near Cambridge, she quietly resists the expectations of those around her—family, colleagues, landlords, and students—while longing for the space to write. Through their words and assumptions, a nuanced portrait emerges of a woman shaping her identity, ambition, and sense of belonging. It is now available to purchase from Graywolf Press.
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Debutiful’s Adam Vitcavage recommends noteworthy debut books for readers to discover each month.
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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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The Book of Losman, the debut novel from K.E. Semmel follows Daniel Losman, an American living in Copenhagen, whose life is marked by solitude after his longtime girlfriend leaves him. He spends time with his three-year-old son, worrying the boy may have inherited his Tourette Syndrome. The hilarious and clever novel is slim and packs a punch on every page.
Semmel is a former Literary Translation Fellow from the National Endowment for the Arts whose own fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Ontario Review, Lithub, The Writer’s Chronicle, HuffPost, The Millions, The Southern Review, and The Washington Post. He has translated the works of Naja Marie Aidt, Karin Fossum, and Jussi Adler Olsen.
We asked the writer to answer our recurring A Life of Books questionnaire so readers could get to know him better and get a few book recommendations to add to their own TBR Pile.
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