debut authors

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Sophie Cabot Black's The Exchange and Brian Kimberling's Snapper, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

After a hotly contested auction among ten major publishers, twenty-eight-year-old Claire Vaye Watkins’s debut story collection, Battleborn, has arrived.  

Three author friends who took different paths to the publication of their debut books—via commercial press, independent press, and self-publishing outfit—compare notes about everything from working with an editor and choosing a cover to marketing and publicity.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Dial Press recently released the debut novels of crossover artists Steve Earle and Josh Ritter, musicians who, despite busy tour schedules, managed to carve out time to put their passions into print as well as into songs.

Today, Karl Marlantes's debut novel is garnering praise for its vivid, trenchant portrayal of American soldiers in the thick of the Vietnam War. But for more than thirty years, the manuscript languished in literary purgatory, while the author struggled to find an agent—not to mention a publisher—willing to take it on.