Tag: writer

Book Covers, News

See the cover for Villains by Samantha Neugebauer

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See the cover for Villains by Samantha Neugebauer

Villains, the debut short story collection by Samantha Neugebauer, follows characters searching for purpose, enchantment, and connection across the United States and around the world. Spanning thirteen stories, the collection explores the tensions of self-mythology, social hypocrisy, and shame—often through mother-daughter relationships—as its characters struggle to distinguish what is lasting from what is fleeting, and what is truly meaningful from what has simply become familiar.

Villains will be published on January 26, 2027, by Washington Writers’ Publishing House and is available for preorder now.

Samantha Neugebauer is a lecturer at NYU Washington, DC, and a senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly. She holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins, an M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. from NYU. Originally from Philadelphia, she spent nearly a decade working abroad and now lives in Washington, DC.

Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Villains, designed by Dave Ring, along with a Q&A with Neugebauer about its creation.

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Interviews

Roshan Sethi wrote The Simp almost as if he were rewriting Vanity Fair

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Roshan Sethi wrote The Simp almost as if he were rewriting Vanity Fair

Roshan Sethi’s debut, The Simp: A Novel Without a Hero, is a Hollywood satire written in conversation with William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. It follows an aspiring actor into an assistant job from hell with a biting sense of humor, a keen point of view on identity politics, and a bit of hope for any artist creating into the void. If anyone could combine such seemingly disparate elements with confidence and control, it’s Sethi. He’s not just a novelist, he’s a director, screenwriter, and practicing oncologist.

The very busy Sethi made time after working on call at his hospital to speak over the phone about the perils of undergrad creative writing workshops, the trouble with The White Lotus season one, and why he almost exclusively reads the classics.

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Interviews

Krista Diamond on Close Relationships with Strangers, Parasocial Relationships, and Celebrity Obsession

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Krista Diamond on Close Relationships with Strangers, Parasocial Relationships, and Celebrity Obsession

In her debut novel, Close Relationships with Strangers, Krista Diamond examines the strange intimacies we form with people we’ll never meet. Blending celebrity culture, wildlife photography, and questions of loneliness and commodification, her debut novel asks what it means to watch, to be watched, and to mistake proximity for connection.

I caught up with Diamond via email to discuss parasocial relationships, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, empathy, and writing a character whose greatest obstacle is his inability to truly connect with others.

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Interviews, my reading life

Jayson Greene wishes he had gotten into literary sci-fi and speculative fiction earlier in life

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Jayson Greene wishes he had gotten into literary sci-fi and speculative fiction earlier in life

When Jayson Greene‘s debut novel, UnWorld, came out last year, he appeared on our First Taste Reading Series podcast, where he read an excerpt from the novel.

The book, out now in paperback, follows four interconnected lives after the mysterious death of a young man in a near-future where human consciousness can be digitally replicated, and AI has begun to reshape what it means to be alive.

We asked Greene to answer our recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers can get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his writing.

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Interviews

Sofia Montrone on Nymph and the Strange Way Time Shapes Us

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Sofia Montrone on Nymph and the Strange Way Time Shapes Us

There is a specific feel to the way time moves during a childhood and adolescent summer. It’s both sludgy and warp-speed, too slow when you need it to end, too dreadfully quick just when you need it to last. These summers are foundational in how a person learns to be: how you are when you’re bored is as important as how you are when you’re in the middle of the starburst of feeling. 

Sofia Montrone, in her outstanding debut Nymph, displays a mastery of the effects of time, how the days themselves characterize us. The novel, set in rural Italy over two very distinct summers, is an elegy for the way time leaves us. It is a love story as much as it is a loss story as much as it is a celebration of the brutal, giddy risk of feeling. It has a wicked sense of humor. There are retellings of The Odyssey, deeply-felt family pains, a formative romance and a consistent sense of becoming. 

But above all, it achieves what all great art aspires to: it makes the reader feel less alone. I came upon this novel in the noblest way, I think. A friend recommended it. He said, “This one’s something special.” He was right. 

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inside the collection, Interviews

Inside the Collection: Mac Crane Dissects Perverts

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Inside the Collection: Mac Crane Dissects Perverts

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 Perverts, writer Mac Crane explores the messy intersections of desire, shame, intimacy, and identity through seventeen audacious stories that push queer life to its exhilarating and unsettling extremes. Set in worlds where people pay to reenact hate crimes, ogle mythical performers, or blur the lines between fantasy and exploitation, Crane’s characters search for connection in places most people would rather ignore. Equal parts provocative, darkly funny, and unexpectedly tender, Perverts argues that those living on society’s margins often see its contradictions most clearly. Crane is also the author of the novel I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Indie Next pick, and Lambda Literary Awards winner, as well as A Sharp Endless Need. Their fiction has appeared in Literary Hub, The Sun, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Joyland, and elsewhere, and they have received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, American Short Fiction, and the Vermont Studio Center.

In our latest Inside the Collection Q&A, Crane takes readers inside their debut short story collection, Perverts.

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Interviews, my reading life

Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life

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Ben Reeves, author of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, reveals the books that shaped his life

Ben Reeves’s debut novel has already earned significant recognition before publication, with an early draft of Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt winning the 2024 Bath Novel Award. Now, the UK author makes his debut with a novel that asks one of literature’s oldest questions through an unexpected narrator.

In Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Death isn’t a terrifying force but a quiet, compassionate presence named Travis, who spends his days comforting people in their final moments. But when he befriends a midwife and her young daughter across the hall, he begins to discover what it truly means to live. Tender, philosophical, and quietly hopeful, Reeves’ novel is a moving meditation on grief, love, and the fleeting beauty of being alive.

Reeves answered the recurring My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped his life and influenced his debut novel.

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Interviews

Alison Leiby on Identity, Chronic Pain, and Why the Messiest Parts of Life Are Worth Writing About

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Alison Leiby on Identity, Chronic Pain, and Why the Messiest Parts of Life Are Worth Writing About

I’m a Lot, the debut memoir from comedian and writer Alison Leiby, showcases her signature deadpan humor and combines it with sincere reflection to create a memorable memoir-in-essays that unravels the expectations put on modern women. Drenched in wit, her writing unpacks everything from the impact of a near-death experience to the highs of discount shopping, and even the joys of being a “Housewives” stan. Pushing back against the narrow definitions women are told they need to fit into, Leiby embraces the joy of unrepentantly living every one of your identities. 

I spoke with Leiby about the complexities of writing a memoir, the pressure to be palatable, and why humor was integral to her essays.

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Interviews

Chiara Bullen on D&D, Fantasy Taverns, and Writing Like You Rolled a Nat 20

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Chiara Bullen on D&D, Fantasy Taverns, and Writing Like You Rolled a Nat 20

The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance captures everything that makes a great TTRPG campaign memorable: the camaraderie, improvisation, and delight of telling a story with friends. In her debut novel, Chiara Bullen follows an ambitious historian investigating a legendary mountain where adventurers arrive eager for glory, yet somehow never make the climb. We spoke with Bullen about D&D’s influence on her writing, creating unforgettable fantasy taverns, and why food scenes are always a critical success.

Continue reading “Chiara Bullen on D&D, Fantasy Taverns, and Writing Like You Rolled a Nat 20” →