Over at the New York Times Book Review, Leslie Jamison and Ayana Mathis write about the excitement surrounding debut novelists’ work. “It’s like hearing an overture at the beginning of a symphony, the introduction of themes and preoccupations that will keep unfolding,” Jamison writes. Mathis says: “A debut novel is a piece of the writer’s […]
...moreAt Electric Literature, Bronwyn Averett interviews Julia Franks about her debut novel, Over the Plain Houses. The novel is set in a small town Appalachian Village, and explores “the government’s role in the lives of individuals, the responsibility of humans toward the environment, and the place of women within their communities.” On the latter topic, Franks says: When women […]
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Shawn Vestal discusses his new novel Daredevils, Evel Knievel, growing up in a mainstream Mormon family, and what he thinks of the American West.
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Lynn Steger Strong discusses her debut novel Hold Still, the influence of Virginia Woolf, unconditional love, and exit strategies.
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Asali Solomon discusses her debut novel, Disgruntled, narrative structure, the mythology of memory and place, and returning to Philadelphia after years away.
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Kim Brooks discusses her debut novel, The Houseguest, her approach to character and historical narrative, and the value of engaging readers with larger social issues through literature.
...moreEmma Cline received $2m advance for The Girls, due out in June, which puts her near the top of a growing list of first-time writers with advances in the millions. Last year, City on Fire earned Garth Risk Hallberg a $2m advance. The allure of debut novelists isn’t always an economic issue: Given the amount of […]
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J. Aaron Sanders discusses his debut novel, Speakers of the Dead, his writing process, and the wisdom of sharing his early drafts with his students.
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My ambition is personal. I don’t think I need to succeed so that the race can succeed.
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Heather Scott Partington reviews Bette Adriaanse’s debut novel Rus Like Everyone Else.
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Annie Liontas talks about her debut novel Let Me Explain You, crafting voices, and the benefits—and occasional pitfalls—of returning to get an MFA after years of writing in the dark.
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Elisabeth Egan discusses her debut novel, A Window Opens, life as a book lover, workplace jargon, and the question we should ask ourselves in place of can we “have it all”.
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Sean Bernard talks about the placid, annoying heaven of his debut novel, Studies in the Hereafter, why he’s both optimistic and cynical about human nature, and the difference between writing short stories and a novel.
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Garth Risk Hallberg talks about his debut, City on Fire, living in New York City now and in the ’70s, and the anxiety and gratitude you feel when your first novel generates so much buzz.
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Author Neil Smith discusses his latest book, Boo, the suffering inherent in being thirteen years old, and how friendship can help pull us through traumatic events in our lives.
...moreIt’s hard to read The Sunlit Night without feeling as though you’re enveloped in warmth, swathed by the author’s lyricism and imagery. The sensation is one unique to Dinerstein’s hand—and perfectly matched for the sun-soaked Nordic tale of lives intersecting at the top of the world. In a lovely interview with Electric Literature, novelist Rebecca Dinerstein talks about […]
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Author Maya Lang discusses her Joyce-inspired novel The Sixteenth of June, the “illiterate, underbred” epic Ulysses, and the insufficiency of “yes” in an interactive interview with Allison Adair.
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Cate Dicharry’s excellent debut novel, The Fine Art of Fucking Up, weaves humor and humanity to explore one woman’s personal and professional dissatisfaction and to suggest how we all might be able to cleave past our setbacks to find our own joy. Dicharry assembles a delightfully absurd cast of characters. The protagonist, Nina Lanning, is the […]
...more2014 wasn’t just the year of the debut—plenty of authors released their second novel, often considered the most challenging for writers to write. Slate sat down with some second-time novelists to discuss their sophomore efforts, like Family Life author Akhil Sharma who spent a dozen years on the novel: If you write for two or […]
...moreIt took Gene Oishi 50 years to write his debut novel, a story about Japanese American identity and family during and after World War II. Over at The Nervous Breakdown, Oishi interviews himself about the process of writing Fox Drum Bebop: I had a lot of excuses, but the reason I didn’t want to write […]
...moreIndependent bookstores will save the world, or at least the publishing industry, maybe. Josh Weil and Mike Harvkey took a road trip across the country, exploring independent bookstores. They found a collection of dedicated shops and local literary communities, but that didn’t answer the fundamental question: how important are independent bookstores are to writers? An […]
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