Hosted by Meg Walker
At Friends & Fiction we love the discovery of new voices. So, we are thrilled to introduce you to this impressive line-up of debut novelists. These twelve first-time authors all have books that have either just recently been released or will come out before the end of the year.
Whether an author is in their twenties or their sixties and beyond, having that first novel published is a truly momentous occasion. Each author’s path to publication is different and unique. And no matter if an author will pen one book in their lifetime or go on to be incredibly prolific, it remains true that you never forget your first. So, we wanted to capture that moment in time for these twelve incredibly deserving and rather impressive writers.
Each one of these books sounds so good that we just know you will want to snap up all of them once you hear about them. Allow us to apologize in advance for the treacherous heights of your TBR pile. Sorry not sorry.
Join us in welcoming — to F&F and to life as published authors —
Florence Knapp (The Names, Pamela Dorman Books, May 6)
Adam Roberts (Food Person, Knopf, May 20)
Jessica Berger Gross (Hazel Says No, Hanover Square/Harper, June 17)
Morgan Pager (TheArt of Vanishing, Ballantine, July 1)
Loretta Rothschild (Finding Grace, St. Martin’s Press, July 8)
Katie Yee (Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, Summit/S&S, July 22)
Amy Silverberg (First Time, Long Time, Grand Central, July 22)
Laura Dickerman (Hot Desk, Gallery Books, Sept 2)
Sam Sussman (Boy From the North Country Penguin Press, Sept 16)
Joan O’Leary (A Killer Wedding, William Morrow, Sept 23)
Caroline Palmer (Workhorse, Flatiron, Oct 14)
Brian Schaefer (Town & Country, Atria, Nov 4)
We hope you enjoy this conversation and that you’ll snap up each of these amazing new novels!
Giveaway
And don’t forget to ENTER our giveaway! One lucky winner will walk away with all 12 of these new debut novels! The giveaway is open now for entries. One entry per person. The deadline to enter is midnight Eastern on Tuesday, August 12th. We will announce the winner on Wednesday, August 13th. Good luck!
In a sentence or two, give us a quick description of what your debut novel is about.
FLORENCE KNAPP: The Names is a sliding doors ‘what if’ style novel, that looks at how the name a person is given can shape the course of their life. It follows three versions of a family, depending on what they call their newborn son. In one storyline, he’s Bear, the name suggested by his elder sister; in another he’s Julian, the name his mum has set her heart on; and in a third, he’s Gordon, called after his domineering father. The novel follows them across thirty-five years and looks at the myriad possibilities a single decision like this can spark.
ADAM ROBERTS: Food Person is about an introverted, frumpy food writer who takes a job ghostwriting a cookbook for a hot mess of a celebrity.
JESSICA BERGER GROSS: Hazel Says No is about a Brooklyn family — clothing designer mother Claire, American Studies professor Gus, precocious tween son Wolf and bookworm 12th grader Hazel — that moves to Maine hoping for an easier, cheaper, stress-free life. After Hazel is propositioned by her principal on the first day of school, the family and their new town will never be the same again.
MORGAN PAGER: TheArt of Vanishing is the story of a museum employee who discovers she can cross through the frames and into the paintings on the walls of the museum, where she starts a seemingly impossible love affair with the subject of one such painting.
LORETTA ROTHSCHILD: Finding Grace is an improbable love story about second chances, the kind you don’t see coming and aren’t sure you deserve. At its core, it’s about how the ghosts of our past shape our future, and whether redemption can be found in the wreckage of what we've lost.
KATIE YEE: My debut novel, Maggie; Or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, follows an unnamed narrator who discovers her husband is having an affair . . . right around the same time that she is also diagnosed with breast cancer, but in a funny way! She names the tumor after his lover and starts talking to it, and more than anything, it’s a story about the people and stories we lean on when everything else is heavy.
AMY SILVERBERG: In First Time, Long Time, aspiring writer Allison moves to Los Angeles in the wake of her brother’s death looking for a fresh start, and to get away from the long shadow of her loud, grieving parents. In a serendipitous encounter, she meets a famous radio DJ—an idol of father’s and late brother’s—and when romance sparks, she’s eager to see where it goes, and who she might become. Suddenly, an unanticipated lifeline emerges: an intoxicating tryst with the DJ’s adult daughter.
LAURA DICKERMAN: In Hot Desk, two ambitious young editors, Rebecca Blume and Ben Heath, are forced to share a “hot desk” on alternating days at rival publishing imprints—they start out in a Post-it war about a mysterious cactus, but things really heat up when they compete to win the estate of a literary lion who has left behind an unpublished manuscript that reveals secrets about the Lion and, surprisingly, Rebecca’s mother, Jane. A dual timeline takes us back to Manhattan in the early 1980s when Jane is an intern at the Lion’s fabulous literary magazine, the East River Review—where she meets the glamorous Rose, and they become best friends. The heart of the book, for me, became the friendship between Jane and Rose and the question of who has the right to tell her story. It’s about mothers and daughters, and it’s a celebration of friendship and women’s voices and of being young and enthralled with New York City, with writing, and with books.
SAM SUSSMAN: Boy From the North Country is about a young man who sets out in search of the celebrity father he never knew and instead finds a deeper understanding of the mother who raised him. The novel is based on my Harper’s memoir essay, “The Silent Type: On (Possibly) Being Bob Dylan’s Son.”
JOAN O’LEARY: A Killer Wedding is a classic whodunit with a modern, satirical twist. It follows New York City magazine reporter, Christine Russo as she covers the high-profile destination wedding of a glamorous billionaire family...bursting with suspicion and secrets.
CAROLINE PALMER: Workhorse is the story of a young, not entirely reliable, woman who lands a job as an assistant at a fashion magazine, and the lengths she will go to, both professionally and personally, to be accepted into this rarefied world to which she does not belong. It's a funny, dark look at the limits of female ambition.
BRIAN SCHAEFER: Town & Country follows a handful of residents in a trendy rural town in the lead up to a congressional race that fuels tensions between locals and second home owners, upends relationships, challenges biases, and tests the loyalties of the candidates’ families and friends.
Tell us where your new book is set and why you chose this location.
FLORENCE KNAPP: Much of my novel is set in an unnamed town in the southeast of England. Although some of the landmarks were inspired by places where I’ve spent time, they’re not drawn from one specific location. One of the narratives relocates to Ireland early on, as I was keen to give the reader a way of easily distinguishing between storylines. I ended up enjoying this as a writer, too — whenever I came to write a chapter set in Ireland, I’d open my notebook and be struck by the feeling of openness offered by this different landscape I was mentally inhabiting.
ADAM ROBERTS: The book is set in New York because I wanted to write about New York City food culture: so many magazines and other publications are located here, not to mention the Food Network. Plus: I wanted to capture my main character’s origin story on the Upper West Side.
JESSICA BERGER GROSS: When my family and I moved from Brooklyn to a small town in the middle of Maine ten years ago, I felt like a fish out of water. I set Hazel Says No in the scruffy and (mostly) loveable fictional town of Riverburg, Maine, taking inspiration from that experience. I didn’t realize how different Maine would feel, or how much I would learn about myself from living here. I wanted my characters to wrestle with those challenges, too. In a heightened way, of course!
MORGAN PAGER: The Art of Vanishing is set at the Barnes Foundation, an art museum in Philadelphia. It's an incredible, intimate museum full of masterpieces -- who wouldn't want to stay forever inside those paintings?
LORETTA ROTHSCHILD: Finding Grace opens in Paris, but quickly heads back to London, England. The characters are British, so the return to London is also a return to real life. My narrator, Honor, is half French but lives in London, so she has a French sensibility in an English world.
KATIE YEE: Technically, I’ve loosely based a lot of the locations in this novel on places I know in New York City, especially Brooklyn. Honestly, I have a hard time imaging the physical details of places I’ve never been, so for scenery, I stuck to what I know. But we’ve taken a lot of the proper nouns, the named New York-ness out of it; much like how the narrator remains unnamed, I wanted this story to feel like it could be anyone, take place anywhere, and belong to us all.
AMY SILVERBERG: First Time, Long Time is set in Los Angeles. I not only live here, but I’m also a stand-up comedian who started my career here. I think it’s an endlessly fascinating place, with all of the longing for fame, and gnawing ambition, and beautiful palm trees and awful traffic, and unrequited dreams that might still come true if only the right person where to read your script, or hear you sing, or watch you tell a joke. I love the “if” of the whole city—the possibilities.
LAURA DICKERMAN: There’s a quote from Julia Child that I use in Hot Desk: “People who love to eat are always the best people.” That’s true, and I also believe that people who love books are always the best people. I set Hot Desk in the world of publishing, both present-day and in the early 1980s, because people who love books really love books, and that passion often raises the stakes outside of work: it’s how you define yourself and how you think about the world—for my characters, things are more heated and emotional in the office and that spreads to every part of life. So where better to set a love letter to those who love to read—the book clubbers, the editors, the librarians, the book bloggers, the writers, the teachers, and the wonderful bookstore people—than in the world of publishing?
SAM SUSSMAN: The novel is set in the Hudson Valley, where I grew up, and in 1970s bohemian New York—a time and place that shaped my mother’s life.
JOAN O’LEARY: The book is set in County Clare, Ireland — loosely based on the castle-hotel in Ireland where I actually got married. I was a Covid bride who (like so many) constantly had to push back my wedding celebrations. After the third canceled date, I thought: if I can’t have my dream wedding, why don’t I write it instead? And honestly, I discovered that writing about a wedding is way more fun than actually planning one. You get to make up the crazy people instead of having to invite them and also — no budget. Writing A Killer Wedding was such a fun escape for me...and hopefully now it will be a great escape for readers!
CAROLINE PALMER: The novel is set in New York City and Brooklyn in the early 2000s—post 9/11, but before iPhones and smoking bans—which has always struck me as a sort of magical moment in time. It was the last gasps of a world and way of being that is now entirely lost.
BRIAN SCHAEFER: The novel takes place in Griffin, a fictional town two hours from an unnamed city in an unnamed state. But it’s inspired by the sociopolitical dynamics of the Hudson Valley, where my husband and I have had a home for over a decade. Hudson is such a special place, and we’ve built a wonderful community there, but I wanted to critically examine what it means to be a good neighbor and a responsible resident in a place you only inhabit part-time. I decided to fictionalize the setting because that’s such a common, and complicated, relationship across the country and I wanted readers to picture the place most familiar to them.
Tell us about your path to publication. Did you always know you wanted to write fiction? And how long was this novel in the works?
FLORENCE KNAPP: I’ve always written, whether fiction, non-fiction, a blog, a newsletter...or just overly-lengthy Instagram captions. I started writing my first novel aged 21, just after I’d graduated. Since then, there have been several half-finished attempts, a non-fiction book about quilt-making, a completed manuscript that failed to find a home with a publisher…and finally, many years later, The Names. I think it took me about five months to write a fairly polished first draft, which is quick for me. But then I spent several months letting it percolate and rewriting chunks before sending it out to agents.
ADAM ROBERTS: I spent the first twenty years of my career writing about food and occasionally writing for film and television. I’ve always loved novels and dreamed of writing one, but it wasn’t until I ghostwrote a celebrity’s cookbook in real life that I realized that it would make for a great premise and the novel started to lay itself out in my head. Start to finish, it took about a year to complete but I like to say it took 46 years because that’s how old I am and it took me that long to figure out what kind of book I wanted to write.
JESSICA BERGER GROSS: Secretly, yes. So much so. Novels are my first and most passionate love as a reader. But I could hardly admit wanting to write them (to myself or anyone else) for a long time. The first pieces I published were personal essays. After my memoir Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home came out in 2017, I had a lost year or two of not knowing what to write next. Even though I was a writer, the idea of attempting a novel felt risky and lowkey terrifying. Like maybe there was a 2-5% chance it would work out? Still, not trying meant my dream would never happen, while trying meant there was a possibility it might. I started drafting 6 years ago, and many revisions later, Hazel Says No came out this past June.
MORGAN PAGER: I have been a writer and a reader for my whole life, and I work in the publishing industry, so I have a deep knowledge of the industry. I played with short fiction for years, but this story was the first time I could see the arc of the novel from beginning to end. Three and a half years passed between when I first had the idea and when the finished book was published!
LORETTA ROTHSCHILD: I always knew I wanted to write fiction. I’ve made stories in my head since I can remember, but until I started studying the art of craft I didn’t know how to turn my idea into a book that people would read from start to finish. I had the concept for FINDING GRACE for a long time before I wrote this version of the book. I’m always writing down ideas. The kernel of the idea came when I received a letter in the post that wasn’t meant for me.
KATIE YEE: I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was three years old! Growing up, I was surrounded by stories, and I have always felt called to this field. I studied literature and creative writing in college, then worked in the publishing industry for five years before stepping away to focus on my own fiction. This novel started as a short story; the first draft I can find is from 2020. It’s a project I’ve been working on, on and off, for the past five years. I never got an MFA, but I had the good fortune of being accepted to a handful of fellowships—from Kundiman, the Center for Fiction, and the Asian American Writers Workshop—in the early years of working on this book; that community, the craft lessons I learned there, those connections, and the confidence that it all inspired were vital to finishing this novel
AMY SILVERBERG: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. In fact, I thought of myself as a writer long before I wrote anything. (I can picture myself as a little kid, in a tweed jacket with a pen behind my ear, asking people questions). I’m primarily a short story writer. This is not only my debut novel, but my first attempt at a novel. The book started out as a thirty-page short story, and with the help of my brilliant editors at Grand Central Publishing, we built a house out of those few planks of wood. I’ve been thinking over the preoccupations in this book for a long time (I’ve been interested in Howard Stern since I was a little kid listening in the back of my parents’ cars), but I started officially working on it in 2022.
LAURA DICKERMAN: When I was very young, I wrote all the time (lots of stories about horses), and I studied creative writing at college and graduate school. As an English teacher, I love an assignment, and twenty years ago, my brother, who works in publishing, gave me an assignment to write a book about a boy who falls in love with a ghost. I wrote it feverishly, got an agent, and then the book didn’t sell. I spent the next 20 years raising two children, tutoring, and occasionally thinking about writing. Then my brother called me and gave me another assignment: write a book about rival editors forced to share a desk who fall in love. Immediately the characters of Rebecca and Ben leaped fully formed into my head! Using my brother for tips about present-day publishing office details (the last office where I worked was in a school founded in 1628; we had rotary phones), I wrote Hot Desk in less than a year. I was lucky enough to have another agent interested, then an editor—so it all happened seemingly very quickly, though it was a long time coming! I like to think that I beat Laura Ingalls Wilder to it—she was 65 when Little House on the Prairie was published, and all you need to know is that I’m younger…
SAM SUSSMAN: I’ve been writing this novel since before I knew what writing was. It took me three years once I opened the laptop.
JOAN O’LEARY: From a young age, I knew I wanted to be a storyteller. I’ve always been a voracious reader and a major whodunit fan, starting with Nancy Drew and working my way up to Agatha Christie. Before starting A Killer Wedding I’d written multiple scripts and some Late Night jokes, but this novel was my first foray into fiction writing. A Killer Wedding will have taken me five years to bring into the world by the time it comes out in September. This book started as a passion project and escape for me during the pandemic that I went on to tinker with in my free time during the years following. But free time was sparse at my high-pressure (and totally awesome) television production job at The Tonight Show. I finally had a moment to properly query agents and send my manuscript out into the world when I was an out-of-work producer during the Hollywood Writers Strike. Life is very ironic sometimes!
CAROLINE PALMER: I have always wanted to write fiction. Even as a kid, I was always filling spiral bound notebooks with short stories and novels that I would illustrate myself, albeit very poorly. However, when I was older, as with so many things, it just didn’t seem sensible. I needed to have a full-time job to support myself, and then I had a family and I figured it was just one of those dreams that wasn't going to come true. In some ways, the pandemic, which was so challenging on so many levels, was the thing that broke the rhythm of my life enough that I finally found the space (and the courage) to start writing this book.
BRIAN SCHAEFER: I’ve always been a reader (a flashlight-under-the-sheets kind of kid) but never aspired to write fiction. I took one creative writing course in college that I had to drop for a job. Fast forward many years and I stumbled into a grad program in creative writing while living in Tel Aviv but again turned away from fiction to focus on journalism. It wasn’t until Covid gave me time and permission that I was able to make this novel my full-time job for a year. It then took two more years (and several more drafts) to find an agent, another year to sell the book, and a year and a half of further editing and pre-production, so it will be roughly six years from conception to publication.
Can you tell us about that moment when you first found out you were being published?
FLORENCE KNAPP: When I look back on it now, there doesn’t seem to be one defining moment. My novel went to auction, so in theory, that was the moment I knew it would be published, but even after those first bids had come in, I didn’t quite let myself believe it. And again, even after I’d signed contracts. Really, it was an awareness that unfolded in increments - seeing the first cover designs, receiving a proof, visiting my publisher in New York, hearing from my novel’s earliest readers…although I’m still not quite sure I’ve truly metabolized that this thing I’ve dreamt of for so many years has been realized.
ADAM ROBERTS: Absolutely. My agent Jenni Ferrari-Adler reached out to the editor Jenny Jackson at Knopf (a lot of Jennies in this business!) and sent her the manuscript and after Zooming with her, Jenny the editor wrote that she wanted to “publish the hell out of this book.” It may have been the best day of my life?
JESSICA BERGER GROSS: After tons of early readers and revisions and many ups and downs, I reached out with an email query to my longshot dream agent Henry Dunow, figuring I probably wouldn’t hear back. He emailed me an hour later asking for the manuscript. That was a Thursday in late November. The next afternoon I checked my phone — Henry had already started reading and loving Hazel. I was in shock; I’d waited 20 years for one of those overnight publishing world reads! We talked for an hour and a half on the phone that Monday, and I signed with him on Tuesday morning. Henry submitted Hazel Says No to publishers that January 2, and my editor John Glynn also read in a weekend. That first email from Henry was when I felt like this was going to happen.
MORGAN PAGER: I can remember standing on the corner outside of the Barnes & Noble UWS, telling my parents that my first-choice editor wanted to buy the book and this dream was about to come true! I think about it every time I walk past that store (which is often, as I can’t help but stop by when I’m in the neighborhood).
LORETTA ROTHSCHILD: YES! It was joyful. I was standing on the stairs of my house when I got the email that St. Martin’s Press wanted FINDING GRACE. It was a very surreal moment. I met with my editor Sarah Cantin over Zoom and we clicked immediately.
KATIE YEE: Honestly, the real story is stranger than fiction. My mother had unexpectedly been taken to the hospital the week I had been meeting with editors. From the hallway outside her room, I took the call that the book had been sold—ultimate joy!—but when I returned, the doctor was waiting for me to tell me that my mother had cancer again. It was the best and worst news of my life, delivered in a span of five minutes. But, ironically, that’s so much of what the book is about: things happening all at once, and the people you surround yourself with to deal with them. The good news of the book was a real buoy in those initial dark days, and Maggie’s publication has been a continual bright spot for me and my mom, to whom the novel is dedicated.
AMY SILVERBERG: I had the lucky (but nerve-wracking) experience of selling the novel on only 30 pages—more of a short story—so I was frankly amazed (and thankful) that anyone wanted to take such a risk on a writer that hadn’t written a novel before. I felt immense pressure to get the book done, but a good kind of pressure. It kept me excited and kept me moving. I can be a terrible procrastinator, so selling it before it was finished seemed to really help.
LAURA DICKERMAN: My brother, my agent, Elisabeth Weed, and I have a Hot Desk text chain, and I remember the moment Elisabeth told us about the preempt from Alison Callahan at Gallery. I believe I texted “I ACCEPT!” then got up and wandered outside in a daze. There was someone in our driveway (electrician? plumber?) and I told him all about it—he was very kind and promised to look for a copy when it came out. It was truly one of the best days of my life.
SAM SUSSMAN: I went to an initial meeting with my editor, the legendary John Burnham Schwartz. We spoke for three hours and I knew I’d do anything to work with him. John called me that night to say he was making an offer.
JOAN O’LEARY: I was working in one of those “quiet pods” at my office in anticipation of a call from my amazing agent, Elisabeth Weed. I remember being very thankful the pod was sound-proof because I screamed SO LOUD when she told me that we had an offer on the book. My sisters were actually in town visiting that night too — so I got to tell them right away. I have an amazing picture of their reactions and us celebrating! I really still can’t believe any of this has happened.
CAROLINE PALMER: The night before I got the news, I went to dinner with friends somewhere downtown near West Houston (I think), and on the walk to the restaurant, I passed this brightly painted wall that said “Good Luck Spot” and I took a picture of it. I decided to take it as a good omen, which is definitely more woo-woo than I usually act. The next day, when I got the news, it was a hot September day, and I walked outside and just stood in my yard in a very long, very happy, shocked silence. I keep a copy of that photo pinned to one of my bulletin boards.
BRIAN SCHAEFER: I was on vacation with my husband’s family when I got The Call from my agent that Atria wanted to acquire the book. I remember being afraid that the service was so bad we’d get disconnected. While our family relaxed on the beach, I isolated to discuss the offer’s terms and whether we’d go back to other editors or accept a pre-empt. We went the latter route and within a few hours, it was done. After years of waiting, it all happened so fast that I wasn’t entirely sure it was real until I got an introduction email to my new editor the next day. I had to keep rechecking that email to make sure I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing.
What’s next from you as an author? Do you have another book in the works?
FLORENCE KNAPP: At the moment, I’m being kept busy with publicity for The Names, but I have an idea for another book and am looking forward to a time when I can hunker down and focus on that.
ADAM ROBERTS: Yes! I’m currently working on another novel that — shocker — also has to do with food. This one’s about a recent law school graduate who realizes that she made a terrible mistake and wants to become a chef.
JESSICA BERGER GROSS: I found so much freedom and creative fulfillment writing fiction, and such joy working on the book with my agent Henry and editor John, and now connecting with readers and booksellers and librarians. So yes, I very much want to write another novel. I’m in the middle of a draft of something new. We’ll see if it works!
MORGAN PAGER: Yes, I’m working on my second novel now!
LORETTA ROTHSCHILD: My next novel is very different from Finding Grace but definitely has my DNA. It has taken a fair amount of time to get Honor out of my head. She is a very strong narrator. At times I am in the supermarket and she just starts yapping at me about something. I have to tell her to chill out sometimes.
KATIE YEE: I think there might just be another novel! It’s still early days, so I don’t want to scare the story away by giving it a label like that, but I’m currently working on something that deals with love and love lost, the magic of kitchen pantries, Chinese banquet halls, and empty art galleries.
AMY SILVERBERG: I’m currently working on a novel about poker! More specifically, women playing in a poker tournament. I’m a poker player myself, and I love adrenaline activities. I think a lot of comedians play poker for this reason. I also love sports documentaries, and stories about women devoting their whole life to something not that many people know much about. For example, I loved Rita Bullwinkel’s recent novel about female boxing, called Headshot. With poker, it’s a bit like that: if you know, you know. You can be the queen of a very small world, but it’s a world not that many people are privy to.
LAURA DICKERMAN: I have a few ideas jostling around for my next book, but one has recently elbowed the others out of the way, and I’ve written two chapters of it. The characters are all living in my head, and I already know how it ends and have scribbled many notes. Like Hot Desk, it’s a mash-up of different genres: it begins with a dead body, there’s a second-chance romance between a young woman who comes back to her hometown in Vermont and rekindles with her high-school boyfriend; there’s a dual timeline and a group of reconnected friends and a character based on my own eccentric, irascible father.
SAM SUSSMAN: I’m writing a second novel about different notions of love, art, and freedom.
JOAN O’LEARY: This is such a fun question to answer because it’s the first time I’m typing these words — my publisher has just bought my second book! Dreams come true (x2). I am so excited for my next novel to make its way into the world — it’s juicy, twisty and whisks readers away to another fabulous destination. Hint: Aperol Spritzes are definitely a must for future book clubs who choose to read!
CAROLINE PALMER: I am working on a new novel, but I had so many ideas (some good, most terrible) pop into my head while I was writing Workhorse that it took a while to decide what one to pursue first. It's always a slow start. I find that until I can name all my characters, I am totally stuck.
BRIAN SCHAEFER: The best advice I’ve received about impending publication is to get going on the next thing so that regardless of what happens with Town & Country (“success,” disappointment, or somewhere in between) I’ll already have momentum on a new project. I’m taking that advice to heart and am in the very early thinking/planning/note-taking stage (which I love) of a potential novel that has me researching, among other things, the Dotcom boom, Denmark in the 1970s, and utopian communes. In the meantime, I’ll continue to write articles about theater and dance.
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About the Contributors
Florence Knapp has previously written a nonfiction book about a centuries-old method of quilt making, as well as contributing to a book for the Victoria and Albert Museum. She lives just outside London with her husband and their dog. Their two children have now flown the nest. The Names is Knapp’s debut novel and will be translated into more than twenty languages.
Adam Roberts is the author of The Amateur Gourmet, Secrets of the Best Chefs, and Give My Swiss Chards to Broadway. He started his food blog The Amateur Gourmet in 2004, and also hosts the podcast Lunch Therapy. Roberts has also written for The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, and for film and television. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband and their dog Winston. Food Person is his first novel.
Jessica Berger Gross is the author of the memoir Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, Longreads, and many other publications. She lives in Maine with her husband and teenage son. Hazel Says No is her first novel.
Morgan Pager is a publishing professional and the content creator behind NYC Book Girl. A graduate of Duke University, Pager lives on the Upper West Side with her husband and their cat. The Art of Vanishing is her first novel.
Loretta Rothschild is originally from London and currently splits her time between the UK and Italy. She lives with her husband, Nat, their young son, and their beloved dogs. Finding Grace is her debut novel.
Katie Yee is a writer from Brooklyn. She has received fellowships from the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Kundiman. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, The Believer, the Washington Square Review, Triangle House, Epiphany, and Literary Hub. By day, she works at the Brooklyn Museum. By night, she writes, usually under the watch of her judgmental rescue dog, Ollie.
Amy Silverberg is a writer and comedian. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing & Literature from USC. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Paris Review, Granta, The Idaho Review, TriQuarterly, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her stand-up has been featured on Comedy Central, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. She also writes television, most recently for "The Movie Show" on the SYFY Channel.
Laura Dickerman has an MA in fiction from NYU and an MA in English from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She has taught high school English at the Hopkins School, the Collegiate School, and Germantown Friends. She was an intern at The Paris Review many, many years ago. At her lowest point, she spent a month temping for her youngest brother who was critical of her photocopying skills. She’s been a book club leader, tutor, and recipient of an NEH grant. She lives in Atlanta with her husband. They have two grown daughters. Hot Desk is her first novel.
Sam Sussman grew up in the Hudson Valley. He graduated with a BA from Swarthmore College and an MPhil from the University of Oxford and has lived in Berlin and Jerusalem. His writing has been recognized by BAFTA and published in Harper’s Magazine. Sam has taught writing seminars in India, Chile, and England and participated in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. He lives in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan and his native Hudson Valley.
Joan O’Leary was a producer at The Tonight Show and studied English and Creative Writing at the University of San Diego. She’s recently taken an NYC sabbatical and currently lives in Abu Dhabi with her husband—who yes, she did marry in an Irish castle, but the similarities end there.
From 2014 to 2019, Caroline Palmer was the director of editorial, video, and social media at Amazon Fashion. Prior to her tenure at Amazon, she spent seven years as the editor of Vogue.com. Her work has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, Life, Seventeen magazine, and Vogue. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband and three children. Workhorse is her first novel.
Brian Schaefer contributes regularly to The New York Times and has written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, and more. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Arts Journalism and was a finalist for the Livingston Award for International Reporting. He earned his master’s degree in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. He and his husband live in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Town & Country is his first novel.
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Thank you so much for introducing us to these debut authors! I always love learning about new authors and reading their first novel!