Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009), was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her stories have appeared in Conjunctions, The Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story, and have been anthologized in TheBest American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize XXIV. She is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Sewanee Writers Conferences, Ragdale, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Underspin (2025) E Y Zhao "E. Y. Zhao writes with kinetic genius about the fast paced, ultracompetitive world of table tennis, and the bliss and heartbreak of chasing greatness. Underspin is as suspenseful as a championship game and as perfectly orchestrated as a winning shot."
Ghost Fish (2025) Stuart Pennebaker "Alison is twenty-three and alone in the world. One night she is visited by a ghost in the shape of a fish that bears an uncanny yet unmistakable resemblance to her dead sister. Thus begins Alison's deeply moving, often hilarious - and ultimately life-affirming - journey to confront her grief while also figuring out how to rejoin the land of the living. Stuart Pennebaker's debut is full of tenderness and deep feeling. I loved it."
Crown (2025) Evanthia Bromiley "Jude is, in the aftermath of the pandemic, struggling to keep her children sheltered and fed - and to navigate the grinding bureaucracy of poverty. Evanthia Bromiley is brilliant on the brutal poetry of daily life, the quicksilver imaginations of children, and the cavernous depths of a mother's love. Crown is an astonishing debut."
The World After Alice (2024) Lauren Aliza Green "A Maine wedding reunites two families - and resurrects buried griefs and secrets along the way. With a remarkable cast of characters Lauren Aliza Green creates a panoramic, suspenseful, and ultimately very moving exploration of loss and recovery. The World After Alice is a beautiful and accomplished debut."
Say Hello to My Little Friend (2024) Jennine Capó Crucet "An improbable, star-crossed bond between Izzy - who's on a quest to become a modern-day Tony Montana - and Lolita - an orca held captive at the Miami Seaquarium - unleashes one of the most wildly original, hilarious, and devastating novels I've ever had the privilege of reading. Say Hello to my Little Friend is a story about climate crisis and migration and grief and the mythologies we invent in order to survive; it is a love letter to the doomed beauty that is Miami. A place so compelling, so abundant with story, that it might take you a minute to notice all the water. I loved every line, every moment spent with this magnetic cast of characters. Jennine Capó Crucet has long been one of my very favorite writers and Say Hello to My Little Friend reads with the dazzling vision of an American classic."
Headshot (2024) Rita Bullwinkel "Headshot is a kinetic, suspenseful portrait of eight girl boxers locked in ferocious competition for the Daughters of America Cup. In the steaming depths of Bob's Boxing Palace, these fighters must face each other and the wild thunder of their own inner worlds. Rita Bullwinkel is brilliant on the physical collision, at once strategic and feral, that is a boxing match, and the private hopes and agonies that compel fighters to step through the ropes."
Every Drop is a Man's Nightmare (2023) Megan Kamalei Kakimoto "Kakimoto's bold and haunting stories are brilliant on the mysterious and potent languages of the body, and on the enduring power of the stories that shape us. Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmareis a stunning debut."
Ripe (2023) Sarah Rose Etter "Sarah Rose Etter is electric on everything from tech culture's toxic absurdities to bone-deep loneliness to the science of black holes. Ripe is a harrowing and mordantly hilarious send-up of the horrors of late-stage capitalism, and a potent meditation on the search for meaning in a broken world."
At the Edge of the Woods (2023) Kathryn Bromwich "At the Edge of the Woods is a rare novel: beautifully attuned to both the mysteries of the natural world and of human consciousness, at once cool and intense, suspenseful and surprising. Just when you think you know where Laura's story is headed the forest path twists, uncovering a world resplendent with ghosts, secrets, and dangerously deep wells of feeling. Kathryn Bromwich is a thrilling new talent."
The Skin and its Girl (2023) Sarah Cypher "The Skin and Its Girl is a thrilling ode to the power of storytelling, to a story's ability to illuminate and conceal, to preserve and destroy. Betty Rummani - born with cobalt-blue skin, into a family rich with ingenuity and secrets - is one of the most memorable and original protagonists I've come across in ages. She leapt straight off the page and made a home in my imagination. I loved falling under the spell of Sarah Cypher's hypnotic debut."
The One (2023) Julia Argy "The One is a whip-smart exploration of what happens when the pursuit of romance is performed for an audience, and the line between the scripted and the real begins to blur. Julia Argy is tremendous on desire, ambition, and self-invention in this sharply funny and powerfully moving debut."
The Butter House (2023) Sarah Gerard "A couple moves into the titular Butter House, and soon find themselves mired in the project of cat care. Sarah Gerard writes beautifully and precisely about the visceral, secretive feline landscape, and the possibilities that emerge when this world intersects with the human realm--challenging the couple at the center of The Butter House to renegotiate their relationship to care and what it means to feel at home."
The Sense of Wonder (2023) Matthew Salesses "When Won is signed by the New York Knicks, it seems at first that his dreams are coming true, but instead he is drawn into a world rife with high-stakes rivalry, subterfuge, and corrosive racism. The Sense of Wonder is equal parts a love letter to the intricate art form of basketball; a blade-sharp page-turner that delves deep into the rotten heart of America; and an ode to kdrama and the liberating power of love. Matthew Salesses brilliantly upends expectations on every page and, by the end, a powerfully new kind of story surfaces. The Sense of Wonder is revelatory and original and I absolutely loved this novel."
Our Share of Night (2022) Mariana Enríquez "I was positively bewitched by Our Share of Night. Towering, electric, wild - this novel is a masterpiece and a true original."
Natural History (2022) Andrea Barrett "In Barrett's hands, science comes alive for the reader-never staid or inflexible, but bursting with energy and ambiguity, a source of adventure, discovery, solace, and, for some characters, devastation."
Night of the Living Rez (2022) Morgan Talty "Night of the Living Rez is an indelible portrait of a family in crisis, and an incisive exploration of the myriad ways in which the past persists in haunting the present. I loved these sharply atmospheric, daring, and intensely moving stories, each one dense with peril and tenderness. Morgan Talty is a thrilling new talent."
Nobody Gets Out Alive (2022) Leigh Newman "A thrilling collection. Leigh Newman's indelible characters chart the turbulent waters of hope and regret in an Alaskan landscape that crackles with danger and wonder. These are gritty and powerful stories, from a wildly gifted writer."
Manywhere (2022) Morgan Thomas "Morgan Thomas is an artist of landscape, from the humid peculiarities of the American South, to the bodies and imaginations of these urgent, searching characters. I was awed by the kinetic, alive, innovative, and spell-casting stories in Manywhere, a debut collection that reads like an magnum opus."
Call Me Cassandra (2022) Marcial Gala "I admire greatly the nimbleness of Marcial Gala's prose, the way his sentences swing effortlessly from emotional ruin to beauty to gallows hilarity and back again. As the storyline cuts between Rauli's childhood in Cienfuegos and his life as a soldier in Angola, a portrait of an unforgettable and defiant spirit emerges. Call Me Cassandra is a searching and uncompromising story about the vast complexities of displacement, the breathtaking power of the imagination, and the tidal pull of fate. I love this novel."
Filthy Animals (2021) Brandon Taylor "The characters at the heart of this elegant storm of stories are ablaze with risk and tenderness. Their voices are bright and clear, the contours of their pains and desires sharp and urgent. A profoundly gifted writer."
Parakeet (2020) Marie-Helene Bertino "Marie-Helene Bertino is one of my favorite writers working today, and her latest is one rare gem of a novel. In Bertino’s hands, anything seems possible, from a dead grandmother returning in the form of a bird to finding unexpected wonder in our strange and broken world, profound redemptions of the heart. Parakeet enchants and enthralls."
Book of the Little Axe (2020) Lauren Francis-Sharma "Book of the Little Axe is epic in ambition and scope, a sweeping tale that illuminates pivotal historical periods in Trinidad and North America, and the links between them. This is also the story of a young man’s coming of age and a mother’s secrets and a family’s love in the face of violence. Lauren Francis-Sharma brings her characters and their tangled histories to life with tremendous precision and sensitivity. This is the work of a major voice, a brilliant talent."
All My Mother's Lovers (2020) Ilana Masad "Ilana Masad’s All My Mother’s Lovers is a stunning excavation of the profound destabilization of grief, the secrets that twist like vines around the root system of a family, and the terror and grace of learning to be vulnerable before others. Maggie and Iris, the daughter and mother that sit at this novel’s heart, are both indelible, with a bond that not even death can demolish. A giant-hearted and sharply funny debut."
Enter the Aardvark (2020) Jessica Anthony "Enter the Aardvark is one wild ride: a condemnation, a haunting, a song of love, a madcap political thriller - and it is absolutely unputdownable."
Strange Hotel (2020) Eimear McBride "In Strange Hotel, a nameless woman’s voyage through a string of hotel rooms gradually reveals an inner world of striking tumult and depth, as her meditations draw her, and us, deeper into the unsettled tides of her own past. Eimear McBride has created a powerfully hypnotic novel of consciousness, one that traces the intricacies of thought and memory in prose so thrilling, so dagger-sharp, it makes the heart race."
The Heavens (2019) Sandra Newman "Heady and elegant . . . The Heavens is something of a chameleon, a strange and beautiful hybrid . . . I woke from The Heavens as I hope to emerge from any work of fiction: moved and unsettled, a new and intoxicating set of questions alight on the mind's horizon."
Women Talking (2018) Miriam Toews "Miriam Toews's Women Talking is a flawless, ferocious work of art. I have yet to read a more scathing indictment of patriarchal violence, or a more illuminating quest to comprehend the most vital contours of the human experience: what is agency, what is meaning, what is justice, what is love. This is the kind of novel that changes you. Get ready."
Remind Me Again What Happened (2018) Joanna Luloff "Remind Me Again What Happened is a profound and elegiac exploration of the relationship between memory and identity, the way one has the power to remake the other. Joanna Luloff is a splendid writer, and this haunting novel is a wonderful testament to her gifts."
MEM (2018) Bethany C Morrow "The moment I opened Bethany C. Morrow’s thrilling and unsettling MEM, I could not stop turning the pages. Dolores Extract #1 - a 'Mem' - defies the rules of her world in a harrowing quest for autonomy and understanding. Her journey generates a deeply powerful inquiry into memory, trauma, ownership, and freedom?into the very essence of what it means to be human. This gorgeously written novel is one of the most enthralling and original debuts I’ve read in years."
Bury What We Cannot Take (2018) Kirstin Chen "In Maoist China, the family at the center of this propulsive, haunting story is fractured by the dazzlingly complex fallout of a single irrevocable act. This beautifully plotted, suspenseful, and deeply compassionate novel shows Kirstin Chen, whose work I’ve long admired, at her absolute finest. Bury What We Cannot Take is a vital book."
Where the Dead Sit Talking (2018) Brandon Hobson "Where the Dead Sit Talking is a sensitive and searching exploration of a youth forged in turbulence, in the endless aftermath of displacement and loss. Sequoyah’s voice is powerfully singular—both wounded and wounding—and this novel is a thrilling confirmation of Brandon Hobson’s immense gifts on the page."
Daphne (2018) Will Boast "Richly meditative and quietly suspenseful, Daphne breathes fresh vigor into timeless questions about love and risk - the unknowable cost of fully opening one’s heart to another. Will Boast writes beautifully about life’s daily moral gambles, and Daphne is an outright marvelous debut."
Pull Me Under (2016) Kelly Luce "I could not stop turning the pages of Kelly Luce's hypnotic debut. Pull Me Under is a fierce and suspenseful exploration of the profoundly mysterious nature of identity, written with precise and spectacular beauty."
