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What debut authors will you discover in 2024? You may be excited about the latest work from writers you already adore, but this could very well be the year you find a new slew of first-time favorites. The march of excellent debut books has already begun, and there are many soon-to-be-established literary stars worth watching, both those who have been published recently and those with releases in the coming months. Keep an eye on who’s emerging and who’s waiting in the wings with our list of some of the most promising, intriguing, provocative debut authors working today.
Liliana Colanzi, who teaches Latin American literature at Cornell University, has already published three books of short stories in Bolivia. A translation by Chris Andrews of her collection You Glow in the Dark, which won the Ribera del Duero International Short Story Prize, is her English-language debut. Colanzi’s stories offer a unique blend of speculative elements, creating “an arresting portrait of corruption, industrialization, the power of nature, and supernatural forces” (Publishers Weekly). She is also the founder of Dum Dum publishing house, an independent press in Bolivia specializing in mixed-genre literature.
Colorado attorney Tracy Sierra’s debut novel, which follows a mother and her children being threatened by an intruder, is a domestic thriller that Kirkus describes as “[f]iercely feminist and viscerally terrifying.” Publishers Weekly compliments the book for its suspense and atmosphere as well as its deeper social commentary: “As grippingly suspenseful as the plot is, Sierra's first outing boasts other strengths just as noteworthy, from its transportingly eerie setting to its indelible main character, a petite, prototypical ‘good girl’ pushed to the brink by years of being underestimated, patronized, and disbelieved by men with power.” If you think you might be interested in reading Nightwatching with a book group, note that Sierra’s website currently suggests she may be available for virtual book club visits (requests can be made through a contact form).
Phillip B. Williams is the author of two award-winning books of poetry, Thief in the Interior and Mutiny. His first novel, Ours, presents a multigenerational, historical, fantastical plot in which a powerful woman named Saint has wreaked destruction on plantations in the 19th-century South, freeing slaves and establishing for them a safe community, named Ours, that is protected by magic. Oprah Daily predicts that “[f]ans of The Underground Railroad, The Water Dancer, and Let Us Descend will devour this lyrical and surreal saga." Kirkus calls it a “multilayered, enrapturing chronicle of freedom that interrogates the nature of freedom itself."
Deborah Jackson Taffa, director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, debuts with the memoir Whiskey Tender, in which she explores her childhood and coming of age in the context of her relationships with family from both the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, as well as her experience of being expected to assimilate into mainstream American culture. Author Tommy Orange comments, “Whiskey Tender is unexpected and propulsive, indeed tender, but also bold, and beautifully told, like a drink you didn't know you were thirsty for. This book, never anything less than mesmerizing, is full of family stories and vital Native history.”
Jessica Zhan Mei Yu teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne. Her debut novel But the Girl follows a Malaysian Australian graduate student referred to as Girl as she contends with the pressures she feels as the child of migrants, her fraught relationship with the work of Sylvia Plath, and her attempts to write a “postcolonial novel” during a residency in Scotland. Author Sharlene Teo writes of But the Girl, “A unique and meaningful novel: refreshingly unsentimental, written with a directness that is both self-effacing and wry. The voice sometimes recalls Lucia Berlin, JD Salinger or Lorrie Moore but it's entirely her own."
Alexandra Tanner is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School and has received fellowships from MacDowell and The Center for Fiction. Worry, her first novel, tells a comic story of the sibling tensions and woes that unfold when younger sister Poppy, who has struggled with depression and a lack of direction, moves into older sister Jules’ Brooklyn apartment. Kirkus calls the novel an “unremittingly jaundiced depiction of modern young adulthood” that “hits rare extremes of both funny and sad." Lit Hub describes Tanner as “an author to watch: she’s both funny and serious, snarky and sweet, and gives us that rare, realistic window into recognizable life.”
Marissa Higgins is a journalist who has covered progressive politics as well as environmental and LGBTQ+ issues for various publications. Her debut novel, A Good Happy Girl, which has been compared favorably to the work of Melissa Broder and Sally Rooney, tells a tale of childhood trauma and adult coping through Helen, a Boston attorney who forms an intense sexual and emotional relationship with Catherine and Katrina, a married couple. Helen’s family history of neglect haunts and informs the storyline. Author Michelle Hart writes, “Higgins's heroine makes for a compellingly prickly protagonist, an uncertain someone who the reader nonetheless wants so much to hug. This keen-edged gem of a novel limns the sometimes erotic, often quixotic quest to transcend oneself while trying to retain one's own personhood."
Allen Bratton wrote his graduate thesis on medieval English kingship, and may have put his knowledge of that topic to use in his debut Henry Henry, which reads as a modern take on Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The novel, set in contemporary London, focuses on a privileged young man named Hal, the tension between him and his father, Henry, and Hal’s relationship with another man named Henry. Kirkus praises the book’s complexity, stating, “At times witty and at others harrowing, Bratton’s book memorably explores the unexpected depths of its protagonist. This novel revisits classic literature but never feels beholden to it.”
Alina Grabowski’s writing has previously appeared in Story, Joyland, The Adroit Journal and other publications. Her debut novel Women and Children First tells the story of a coastal Massachusetts community as it is shaken by the tragic, mysterious death of a high school student. The plot unfolds from a multiplicity of viewpoints, featuring the perspectives of ten different women. Publishers Weekly calls the book “magnetic” and comments, “The ennui of small-town life is perfectly captured in the slice-of-life vignettes, which coalesce into a riveting set of Rashomon-style retellings. Grabowski shows immense promise.”
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