Intimate, wry and a little sour, Asa Drake’s Beauty Talk addresses the (im)possibility of talking about beauty in America without addressing whiteness. Here is a personal history of who gets to be beautiful.

While Beauty Talk pulls from the autobiographical—a father as the 1970’s Camel cigarette man, correspondences with abandoned siblings, a historic family map—the collection is shaped by the illegibility, omission, and ekphrasis of the personal archive. Embracing a fractal telling, these poems explore an inheritance of mixed aesthetics and what it means to partake in a lineage that is both colonial and immigrant. Drake pulls from sources as varied as Chiwan Choi’s adaptation of the Bechdel test and Viv Chen’s substack The Molehill to index the racial and gendered language of advertisement copy, incident reports, and parental beauty advice. Woven between these coded distinctions of moral and aesthetic utility, Beauty Talk asks if, perhaps, family is the first commodification of the body.

Here is the cover, designed by Alban Fischer:

Asa Drake: In 2022, I had the opportunity to study with Paisley Rekdal at a Tin House (now McCormack Writing Center) Summer Workshop, and during that workshop we joked that I could write a whole book about beauty advice from my father who was a model during the 1970s. I’d never really written about my father because writing about my father meant writing about the body, about whiteness, about abandonment and desirability.

In Beauty Talk and, I think, in life, beauty is euphemistic. Beauty is a kind of cultural adherence that we’re promised will make our lives easier. This collection is filled with moments where I catch myself using beauty in place of whiteness, a substitution/exnomination I learned from my parents. Throughout Beauty Talk, I’m testing the distance between signifier and signified. Even when we talk about the color yellow or the scent of jasmine or peaches or the moon, we can’t separate the symbolism we’ve attached to each word from the thing itself.

I would have never imagined this cover image on my own, and yet I know exactly how Alban Fischer’s design ties into the book. There are two poems that immediately come to mind: one with pearlescent bilo-bilo and another where I compare a peach canned in syrup to the moon. Beauty Talk is a collection filled with spheres, orbits, and ellipses. And the moon at some point becomes the subject of direct address. It’s a heavenly shape that I return to as the site of harm and repair.

When I think about the many substitutions which happen throughout Beauty Talk, Alban’s incredible cover becomes charged with hypergloss and maybe a little sarcasm. I love how this image explores when words mean themselves and when they call to one another. Alban’s visual rhyme (moon in spoon!) gives me hope that despite engaging with questions of whiteness and exnomination, readers will laugh at my jokes.

Alban Fischer: The brief for Beauty Talk was relatively open, and the author was quite helpful in providing possible directions. The image of the moon is a consistent presence in the book, so it seemed to me a solid compass to work with. The question was how best to represent it from among all its permutations and valences throughout the collection. I was initially intrigued by the possibility of using the dumplings in one of the title poems as moon or, better yet, using “The moon is a peach lifted / from syrup” as a stepping-off point. There were almost too many possibilities, and I was briefly concerned about creating something unintentionally zany. Ultimately, it was Asa saying she was “more interested in a cover that is striking and memorable than a cover that is pretty” that gave me license to just let myself be led wherever these poems’ warped poignance took me. The line “it is easier for an American to enter heaven / than to engage with an unfamiliar texture” from “Recipe for Bilo-Bilo” stuck with me; it seemed to encapsulate the book’s themes, and the dumplings in the poem were the moon the cover needed. The rest was mostly getting the color scheme and type choices right. Smoosh’s exaggeratedly condensed contours finish off the cover with the right amount of cheeky refinement. I loved this book. Drake writes into complicated family dynamics and culturally sanctioned standards of how one exteriorizes identity in ways that are thrilling and original. It’s such a pleasure when a project like this comes your way.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of BEAUTY TALK by Asa Drake appeared first on Electric Literature.

From the award-winning author of Dearborn, a tragicomic story collection that moves between Lebanon and Michigan, exploring migration, war, family, and the enduring pull of home.

In a village haunted by unexploded cluster bombs, a chorus of matriarchs obsess over a poet-turned-mayor who struggles to lead with a confident hand. While patrolling a public pool in Dearborn, Michigan, a 72-year-old lifeguard reminisces on his youthful days at a Beirut beach club and finds unexpected companionship in a glamorous widow. Driven to the brink by his visiting mother-in-law, a factory worker seeks sanctuary in a rented storage unit—a private world that struggles to stay insulated from the trauma of global conflict.

Spanning the 1970s to the present day, There’s Plenty of Sunshine Where You’re Headed alternates stories set in Lebanon and Dearborn, tracing lives linked by migration, memory, loss, and longing. With his trademark humor and sincerity, Zeineddine offers a resonant portrait of the Arab and Arab American experience and the stubborn, surprising ways people keep building lives, no matter where they land.

Here is the cover, designed by Lucy Kim:

Ghassan Zeineddine: The stories in There’s Plenty of Sunshine Where You’re Headed are set in Lebanon and Dearborn, Michigan. A suburb of Detroit, Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the country. On the east side of town, the Arab side, you’ll find Arabic restaurants and bakeries, grocery stores filled with goods from Lebanon, Yemeni coffeeshops, mosques, and the Arab American National Museum. When we’re in Dearborn, my wife, Rana, and I speak mostly in Arabic with people. It makes us feel in touch with Lebanon. 

I grew up in the Middle East and immigrated to Washington, D.C. in 1990, at the age of 10. I’d go on to spend most of my 20s and part of my 30s in Beirut before Rana and I moved to Dearborn, where we bought our first house and I began to write about the Arab American community. Our children were born in Michigan. Whenever someone asks our eldest daughter, Alma, where she’s originally from, she says, “Michigan.” This summer, we won’t be able to visit Lebanon because of the volatile political situation, but we always have Dearborn, which has become a second home. An American city with an Arab pulse. 

Initially, when my wonderful editor, Masie Cochran, and I were brainstorming ideas for the cover, we both wanted something colorful and vibrant. An image that captured the two distinct but connected worlds of my story collection. Lucy Kim’s brilliant design does all of this and more. With Beirut placed on top of the reddish sun and Dearborn below, the cover brings both cities to vivid life. The airplane flying over Beirut and another flying over Dearborn suggest arrival and departure, and circular movement between both places. Moreover, what I appreciate so much about Kim’s representation of Beirut is its religious and architectural diversity—there are traditional Lebanese stone houses and skyscrapers, and mosques and a church. 

I’ve become obsessed with the cover. Every time I look at it, I think of Beirut and Dearborn, two cities that I love and that have shaped me as a person and as a writer. 

Lucy Kim: I really love reading and working on short story collections and this one is no exception—Ghassan’s characters are based in Lebanon as well as in Dearborn, MI. They are connected by their Lebanese Muslim heritage and, as such, they all bear the trauma of a nation that has lived and continues to live with constant war and violence, whether the characters emigrated decades ago or are second generation immigrants who’ve never stepped foot in the Middle East. These characters face threats daily, both physical and emotional. What’s so amazing is how Ghassan is able to capture the resonance of their shared trauma in the face of their surroundings with such pathos and humor. It’s this resonance that I wanted to try to depict on the cover, the two worlds of Dearborn and Lebanon in dialogue with each other. Since Beirut has so many unique buildings in it, I focused on that skyline to be the counterpart for the suburban houses of Dearborn, by using edited bits of stock art. My initial design had fewer buildings, and Ghassan suggested adding more to try and capture the bustling liveliness of modern Beirut. Using very bright, pop-candy colors felt entirely appropriate given the humorous situations some of these characters find themselves in, and Ghassan agreed. The result is a clue to the reader that this is a very unique perspective into the Middle Eastern Muslim experience.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of THERE’S PLENTY OF SUNSHINE WHERE YOU’RE HEADED by Ghassan Zeineddine appeared first on Electric Literature.

In this collection of stories exploring the experiences of women—and sometimes men—of all ages, at pivotal moments in their lives, a child spies two women kissing at her mother’s bridge club. A young girl unwittingly contributes to terrible loss as she tries to honor her friend’s deepest wishes. A late-night drowning at a high school graduation party is mired in secrets. An older woman compulsively attends the town’s funerals, believing her presence there to be God’s calling. A retired woman finally harvests insights and breaks old habits through revelations from her daughter’s experiences. The stories in Secrets and Other Hobbies are layered with purposeful deception and poignant, hidden yearnings that cause their characters to stumble before they rise, if they rise at all. Serious and darkly humorous, noble and morally ambiguous, achingly vulnerable and always memorable, Mary Hannah Terzino’s debut lays bare an indelible and realistic Midwest.

Here is the cover, designed by Abby Paulson, with artwork by Juli Balla:

Mary Hannah Terzino: I’m a character-driven writer, and I found inspiration for the characters in Secrets and Other Hobbies in both the people I grew up with in northwestern Indiana and folks I know as an adult living in the upper Midwest. We Midwesterners are polite, simple-appearing folks who often pulse with secrets, obsessions, or eccentricities below the surface. The people in my stories yearn for redemption from loss, disappointment, or their own imperfections and bad habits. These poignant yearnings cause them to stumble before they rise—if they rise at all. In many of the stories, life-changing secrets threaten to inhibit their redemption. This is true especially for the young women in “Bridge Club,” “Wept the River,” “Suitcase Twins,” and the anchor story, “Three Seasons of Judy Mitchell.” Some protagonists live in the present, while others navigate the cultural values of the mid-twentieth century. I write about the mid-century in part to dispel the notion that it was a golden era about which we should feel nostalgic. Those characters led messy lives, too! Their stories explore the effects of hidden sexual identities, abuse, or economic class divisions—dilemmas unresolved in contemporary times. Yet I’m a writer who cannot shed the need for humor to lighten our loads, and I’ve tried to include funny or absurd moments in everything I write, even the heavier stuff. 

When I saw the striking photograph of this young woman with a shadowed hand over her mouth, I was struck instantly by how well she represented the notion of secrets as used in my stories. About a third of the stories in the collection feature young female protagonists, some from the 1960s or ‘70s and some from the present. The solemn look of the young woman in the photo, and her neutral attire, made her an ideal representative for these fictional women. I was excited to see what Abby Paulson, the cover designer, could come up with to amplify the sense of tension I perceived when I looked at her. The designer’s bold font and suggestion of orange for the title sealed the deal. Orange is the color of warning signs, a great amplifier of tension. It was like a shout set against the stillness of the photo. 

Abby Paulson: Working with Mary on the cover was a process of vision. At Cornerstone Press, we work with our authors to develop covers that speak to them and their work, and Mary’s cover is no exception. 

The image Mary wanted worked incredibly well for a cover, and by adding a splash of color with the orange palette, we were able to convey warmth and danger, light and dark, stark and complex. 

Another important move was figuring out text placement, given the standalone strength of the image. Spreading the title out vertically pulls the eye from top to bottom, forcing them to confront the silencing of the woman on the cover. 

Altogether, these elements make for a vibrant, atmospheric, and striking cover.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of SECRETS AND OTHER HOBBIES by Mary Hannah Terzino appeared first on Electric Literature.

From the celebrated author of Crossing, a finalist for the National Book Award, a piercing, candid novel about a man haunted by the violence of his past and a family ruptured by the war that ravaged their homeland, for readers of Douglas Stuart, Jenny Erpenbeck, Ocean Vuong, and Garth Greenwell.

1996: A boy raised in Finland spends the summer at his grandfather’s house in Kosovo, a time that will mark him for the rest of his life, isolating him from his family and ensconcing him in a life of the mind, the complex escape of imagination.

Decades later, having grown into adulthood and built a career as a celebrated author, he travels with his mother again to Kosovo, a country that has since been savaged by war, where fear still guides people’s everyday lives. The journey forces him to delve into a past both real and imagined, into a mire of trauma and illness. Can memories be trusted? What can be forgiven? And what demands revenge? His questions spiral through his every interaction—with his relatives, with a family in need, with a seemingly duplicitous community leader—until he’s confronted with the ultimate, the most suffocating question of all: What will it take to survive history?

Staggering in both its psychological acuity and tour-de-force prose, A Cow Gives Birth at Night shows us what it is to live a life without safety, to be drawn towards danger, and the haunting truths of what can happen in a family after the lights have been turned off.

Here’s the cover, designed by Linda Huang and Emily Mahon:

Linda Huang and Emily Mahon: The author wanted the cover to reflect the restlessness and claustrophobia of the novel. We felt like there needed to be something human and vulnerable, and the hand in red almost swallowing the calf spoke to his desire for an unexpected and “fleshy” element. The type is set in a simple serif, with the title and author on opposite corners, which nicely reinforces the angle of the hand. A black sky with specks of gold cascades down the top left—a specific request from the author. To us, the painterly cow in the red palm is such a tender, striking image, almost womb-like, evoking the “birth” in the title.

Pajtim Statovci: Sometimes I get asked whether my books have a particular look in my mind, whether there’s a figure, an image, or at least a color present for me while I’m writing. The answer is—a rather unsatisfying—yes and no. 

I draw a lot of inspiration from the work of other artists, from fellow writers to theater professionals and architects, so my artistic space is filled with different voices and visions. I have felt especially grateful and humbled when I have been lucky enough to have my work staged, turned into an adaptation. To be able to provide other artists with something that they have offered me is one of the greatest gifts I’ve received as an author.

There are, of course, the adaptations that are not spoken of enough. Cover artists and graphic designers have an almost impossible task at hand: to create a cover, from scratch, that is supposed to do all of, but not only, the following:

1. capture the essence, the spirit, of a massive amount of text, however abstract it may be;
2. support the story and everything it has to say, however impalpable it may be, through typography, color palette, composition, concept, etc.;
3. meet the possible hopes and needs of the publisher, author, booksellers, reviewers and also readers, however varying those may be;
4. create something distinctive, unique, never-before-seen, surprising, no matter how impossible that may be.

Easy, right?

In my eyes, the color of the world in my novel A Cow Gives Birth at Night is dark green, dark blue, and silvery. It is early in the morning, and somewhere in the distance there’s a cow, living its lonely life, always on the outside, escaping our sight. Yet, she is dependent on the care of a fellow animal, someone as sensitive as she is, a child who is able to see himself as her equal. There are no stars, no sun, no mercy here, and nothing leading to safety. 

When I first saw the US cover of my novel A Cow Gives Birth at Night, a breathtakingly striking, gorgeous design that the magnificent Emily Mahon—one of the most gifted designers I know and have had the privilege to continue working with—created in collaboration with Pantheon’s incredible art director, Linda Huang, I immediately thought: That’s it, that’s my book, all of it, and it’s everything and more, from every direction.

 So much better than in my imagination.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “A Cow Gives Birth at Night” by Pajtim Statovci, Translated by David Hackston appeared first on Electric Literature.

Mexico City’s water system is the costliest and most absurd on the planet. A series of dams in neighboring states hydro-elevate water past drought-stricken communities before water arrives, polluted and chemically treated, into the drained lakebed that used to be Tenochtitlan, heart of the Aztec Empire, and what is now the overgrown and arid metropolis of Mexico City. From there the water is used before black, residual wastewater finally filters back to the countryside to grow food for the city.

In Diego Gerard Morrison’s darkly funny, picaresque, and hydro-ethnological stories, Upflow follows the path of water in and out of Mexico City. Scarcity, pollution, corruption and even amplified earthquakes rise through the ghostly lakebed of Mexico City’s past to manifest in the present. Through surrealist and historical romps spanning the Spanish conquest, the subsequent desiccation of the lake, as well as modern stories warning of the near future, Upflow’s prescient fictions embody the fluid nature of water and how it often eludes those who need it most.

Here’s the cover, designed by David Wojciechowski:

Diego Gerard Morrison: Upflow is a collection of hydro-ethnological stories that maps the trajectory of water from its source and into the city, a calculated narrative that became a personal story for me as an author as well. Raised in one of the rural communities that houses a dam that feeds the city with water, and then moving to Mexico City, a metropolitan area that houses over 24 million people, I witnessed the chaos that the water supply system creates—including magnified earthquakes as collateral damage—and felt embodied and mirrored in the paradox. Throughout the daily beholding of a parched, thirsty landscape that only contains water which it can’t use, the cover of Upflow provides the ideal sensory experience of the communities that see the water bypass them on the way to the city—thirsty land that yearns for a green that can only arrive with water that is visible but far from grasp, that doesn’t belong to those who live in its midst.

When we talk about water in and around Mexico City, the first idea that comes to mind is scarcity and misuse, but perhaps also the imagined and utopian possibility of abundance as yearning, especially in a location that used to be a basin and a lake system that historically housed water. When it came to developing a cover for Upflow and its complexities, I was thinking about how a flat, bidimensional image could capture this odd dichotomy on paper, how its dry surface could also project the longing for wetness and its myriad manifestations. Split/Lip designer David Wojciechowski subtly, and seemingly telepathically, laid down these conflicting ideas even with the first drafts of his cover design. The shade of anemic green as background provided a subliminal potential for fertility, but at the same time felt reined in, a hue that still portrayed insufficiency, the perennial lack of the vital liquid, the inconvenient feeling of it’s never enough. In addition to color, David underlined the concept of scarcity by adding a texture to the image that mimics the furrows and cracks of soil in times of drought, figures that might be taken as rivers run dry, projecting the vanished water of some past. As a final layer, which anchors the aforementioned ideas, David added the shape of the country of Mexico as a single drop of water, which seems to pop from the page, tilting the visual odds in the favor of scarcity, which runs as the meandering thread throughout the collection. The magic of David’s cover lies in the nuanced and minimalist combination of promise, struggle, the feeling of being forever on the brink of hydric abundance and what it means for those living amidst this zeitgeist.

David Wojciechowski: Diego’s book is all about water (past, present, and future) as it relates to Mexico City, and, while I like the idea of avoiding the obvious, I felt that water needed to be on his cover. I explored a lot of possibilities from photographs to aquifer maps to abstractions. The trick was making sure the connection between water and Mexico was clear. The cover clicked when I stumbled upon the work of 3D modeler Hammad Khan. He had created these 3D maps of countries in different materials, so I approached him about making one of Mexico. What struck me about the finished map was, isolated by itself, it looked so small. The isolation and the lack of rippling on the water made it look like a drop of water in the shape of a country instead of, say, an ocean in the shape of a country. It really helped capture the scarcity aspect that Diego’s book explores. From there, it was a matter of making sure the text maintained that sense of minimalism and scale.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Upflow” by Diego Gerard Morrison appeared first on Electric Literature.

A knife-sharp, deliciously sexy story about a young actress and the lengths she will go to fulfill her dream, under the guidance of a shadowy and eccentric auteur.

Natalie is prepared to give up acting forever before being abruptly cast as a leading role in maverick director Robert Langford’s secretive new horror film. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, so while Natalie has questions about the actress who mysteriously dropped out of the role before her, as well as how her disability will be portrayed in the film, she brushes them aside. Natalie joins the star-studded production for weeks of rigorous rehearsals that employ strange methods and arcane talismans, leading to dangerously deep bonds between cast members.

Once shooting starts on location at a remote Scottish castle overlooking the sea, a series of unsettling phenomena haunt the set, leading to whispers among the local population that the film is cursed. As filming progresses, Natalie debates whether she is using Robert’s film or it is using her, as well as what must be sacrificed in the service of art.

Hypnotic, disquieting, and surprising, Distortion is a modern gothic tale of seduction and survival.

Here’s the cover, designed by Eric Obenauf:

Kathryn Bromwich: There is a mismatch in the way we see ourselves, the way we wish to appear to the world, and the way the world actually perceives us. In Distortion, I wanted to explore the friction and contradictions between these states, thinking about the limits of perception both in ourselves and others. The world of cinema and acting was a natural setting for these questions: the elevation of reality into something grander and stranger, the often fraught behind-the-scenes underpinning the mirage, film’s seductive appeal speaking to a deep and primal part of us. In the dark of the auditorium, the outside world temporarily ceases to exist and we willingly enter a game of make-believe with the film-maker, whose vision becomes the lens through which we experience the universe they have created, the characters they have breathed life into.

The moment I saw the cover I knew it was right: the uncanny Hitchcockian mood, the delicate crack in the veneer, the reflection that isn’t quite as it appears. I have always been fascinated by artistic representations of doppelgängers: a splintering of the self that threatens to undermine your sense of identity, the aspects of yourself you have kept so carefully hidden rising up and breaking through to the surface. Visually, the cover echoes the book’s preoccupation with doubling, and the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive. Growing up with a disability, mirrors have long been a source of trepidation, lest I catch a glimpse of myself unguarded; to counteract internalized feelings of shame, I choose instead to believe in an idealized version of myself, a futile game of self-deception that distorts reality into a shape of my choosing. There are few books that explore beauty, desire, and disability. I hope Distortion will force readers to contend with preconceptions they may not even realize they have: make them look in the mirror and be honest with themselves about what they see.

Eric Obenauf: I love Kathryn’s work. There’s something both very filmic and very Shirley Jackson about her books, while being completely her own distinctive style. I always thought her first novel, At the Edge of the Woods, would make a tremendous movie. Now the new novel, Distortion, actually takes place on a film set. I designed the hardcover and paperback covers for At the Edge of the Woods, and I believe I wanted them to invoke movie posters. The hardback design wants to convey a timeless, classic story, and a paperback thriller from the mid-20th century, when the book is set, while the paperback wants to be an A24 movie.

For Distortion, much of the design inspiration that Kathryn shared with me felt more contemporary while conveying a sense of the uncanny. There is the doubling in the story that Kathryn mentions, which felt important to represent visually, and while the book is a psychological thriller, it’s also a love story, and about self-perception, and acceptance. I really love the end design. It’s nice when it works out, isn’t it?”

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Distortion” by Kathryn Bromwich appeared first on Electric Literature.

When a volcano suddenly emerges in the middle of his family’s Alabama cattle pasture, young Charlie Melvin is confronted with a promise his grandfather once made—that something extraordinary would rise from the land.

As Charlie comes of age, he wrestles with the meaning of the volcano and the legacy of his family. His story unfolds through evocative vignettes that explore love, loss, responsibility, and faith.

Graceful, tender, and emotionally resonant, Bradley Sides’ The Volcano Keeper is a moving portrait of a young man navigating grief while discovering the quiet miracles woven into the natural world.

Here is the cover, designed by Chiana Royal:

Bradley Sides: When I write, I almost always begin with an image. These images guide so much of my narratives–and, honestly, I’d be in trouble without them.

Not too long ago, I was in a writing workshop, and we were asked to create a scene from childhood. Here’s what I came up with: “I’m on my Alabama family’s back porch. Covering an algae-stained pond, there’s this big, top-heavy tree, full of all kinds of greenness extending from untamed branches, with its roots angled from the dirt and mud. There are mallard ducks flapping about under the shade, obsessively quacking. Leaves and feathers twirl about, like stray clouds. Cows abound at the periphery, and bringing it together, there’s this strange and soothing mix of sounds. Crickets. Tractors. Wind brushing against hay. Bullfrogs splashing.” As you can see, even with something so short, it began with an image. After I had that porch and, then, the pond, I could open up that memory. I could make it come alive, and I could make it real.

Chiana, the designer for my new book, The Volcano Keeper, which mixes the Rural South with magical realism, asked me a few questions about what I might like to see on the cover. I didn’t think I could offer much help, but I approached the process like I do my writing. I thought of images. Specifically, I began to list images that are heavy within The Volcano Keeper. I came up with several things, and I sent her the list.

Not too long later, I received the beautiful cover. It includes many of the images I suggested. The back jacket even features a cow that looks just like one named Rosie that I used to show at fairs across Alabama when I was younger, which makes the cover extra special. There is such vibrancy, too. It pops with life. The Volcano Keeper is, at the end of the day, about love–about how grief comes from a grand form of love. It’s also about how we find healing and peace, again, from love. The bright colors Chiana uses perfectly showcase the heart of this book. To me, it’s perfect.

Chiana Royal: Working on The Volcano Keeper by Bradley Sides was just as fun as it looks. The bright colors, detailed motifs, and segmented composition all played into the themes of the novel. . . also ensuring it would stand out on the bookshelf!

My design process is a collaborative one. To gain insight into Bradley’s novel, I sent over a questionnaire. Back came his design preferences and a list of motifs—the tractor, cow, firefly, and of course, the volcano. The “aha moment” came to me while flipping through one of my art history books and landing on Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Cans.

I particularly love the way pop art transforms everyday familiarities into icons. By drawing on the high-contrast palettes and the graphic punch of the mid-century pop art movement, I created a design that evokes The Volcano Keeper’s vibrant setting and magical realism.

The goal was to give a brief glimpse of the story, peeking through at hints of the novel’s world while mirroring the vignette format.

This cover has definitely made it on my list of favorites, and I hope to explore more modern art-inspired designs in the future!

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “The Volcano Keeper” by Bradley Sides appeared first on Electric Literature.

Blow Yourself Up is a story of first love across cities, spanning the decade that transformed the internet.

In the halls of an elite East Coast high school, Arjun and Payal fall in love as the world begins to tilt toward the digital. Over the next eight years, their trajectories diverge as sharply as the fractured internet itself. Payal ascends to the dizzying, dopamine-fueled heights of New York’s influencer economy, finding fame on Boost, a looping video app that is as rewarding as it is demanding. Meanwhile, in a cavernous office in Chicago, Arjun, a musician whose dreams have quieted, now cleans up the same platform’s debris, moderating the internet’s darkest videos. When a brutal act of political violence against a beloved musician goes viral, this rip in reality forces the pair to confront the motivations of the platforms they inhabit. A sharp exploration of creative ambition and the multifarious nature of identity, this is a story of love in the time of infinite scroll and a look at what we sacrifice to be seen.

Here is the cover, designed by Matt Avery:

Ankur Thakkar: This novel is a love story (and so, a ghost story), told from both characters’ perspectives, a will-they-won’t-they narrative spanning from the era of the first smartphones to when the internet scrambled our brains. It’s about making a creative life as the internet changed what creativity means. There aren’t obvious visuals for this story—rather, there are, but I wasn’t interested in them. The designer provided several great directions, but this figure immediately stood out. I couldn’t have dreamt it up myself, but it felt so right. There’s the tension between digital and analog life, of identities coming into being, and the undercurrent of yearning that guides both characters. I would have been equally drawn to the figure if it were stenciled on a wall, used as an album cover, or as a posthumous symbol. I’m so grateful to have this horny emo book reflected through Matt Avery’s palette.

Matt Avery: For this cover, we wanted to convey a few themes. The novel has two main characters that are very much online. But we didn’t want any overt references to social media or the internet. Another question was how to channel or play off the main title (without actually illustrating a “blow up”). The author and publisher provided a lot of promising suggestions and I was able to create or find a good number of options that felt like they resonated with the text. During that process, I remembered a couple figures I had drawn previously that I might be able to work with to suggest the characters’s grappling with identity—as well as their online experience. However, an expressed preference at the outset was for “no people/figures.” I understood why—and at the same time felt that by layering the drawings we wouldn’t depict a fixed identity and would provide a sufficiently open-ended reading. Are we seeing two people? One person transmogrifying? Or a digital will-o’-the-wisp? You’ll have to read the novel to (not) find out.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Blow Yourself Up” by Ankur Thakkar appeared first on Electric Literature.

65 writers and artists (many of whom are EL contributors whose work you can find here, here, and here) capture early motherhood in scenes and revelations: a vulnerable, kaleidoscopic record of postpartum life.

In the early days with their first babies, two friends began comparing notes on what, exactly, was going on in their postpartum bodies and minds. What was a wake window? How could anyone function under the weight of so much love? All their new-mom friends were overwhelmed too. In search of the book they needed, editors Rebecca Knight and Julie Buntin invited 65 acclaimed writers and artists—Julia Phillips, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Liana Finck, Jenny Slate, Naima Coster, and more—to riff on shared concerns: burp volcanoes, career shifts, breastfeeding logs, partnership dynamics, minor victories and major insecurities. Here is a bedside table companion for every mother who has wondered how she’ll make it through the wilderness of early parenthood, and a window into her experience for the family and friends desperate to better care for their beloved moms-to-be. Brave, unexpected, and revelatory, Notes to New Mothers offers a new map of motherhood as both a singular and communal experience.

Here is the cover, designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson, with original artwork by Kristen Diederich:

Rebecca Knight: It took us a long time to find the right cover art for Notes to New Mothers because the structure of the book is so unusual. It’s a new form: a 60-writer chorus singing 582 tiny notes, in and out of harmony. It’s a juicy giftable item and an experimental, literary text. What kind of cover could cover both bases? It couldn’t be too literal (stock photo of pacifier stack) or too droopy (Mother’s-Day-Monet) or too floral or not floral enough or too feminine or too Gothic or too discouraging or too perky. We wanted it to be an accomplished aesthetic object in its own right, a soothing visual companion to house the warm community of voices inside. We wanted it to be elegant, energetic, timeless, simple, strong. We came up with a million almosts. And then, perusing the L.A. gallery LOBSTER CLUB’s 2026 Frieze Week group show, we discovered the work of painter Kristen Diederich.

Diederich’s paintings and our book are devoted to polyphony. She too is building up her images from the innumerable contributions of small strokes. Her instincts as a colorist, and as an abstract scribe of the natural world, are as various, understated, rapturous, and surprising as the prose stylings of our disparate, acclaimed writers. Looking at a Diederich painting is an invitation to investigate, to think and look again, all while relishing in the physical, the sumptuous. We came full circle with the project when we learned that Kristen attributes her painting practice to her own mother, also a painter, who found a way to combine creative output and childrearing. This is the very balance our contributors are in the midst of calibrating. We have been giddy about our cover ever since Kristen agreed to come on board. Norton’s Design Director Sarahmay Wilkinson, herself a new mother, created the cover with expert composition and iconic typography, all while tending to her own young son. We can’t imagine a fuller, finer, or more fitting artwork to invite readers into Notes to New Mothers.

Julie Buntin: Rebecca has captured exactly how I feel about Kristen’s artwork and how it evokes our book! I’ll just add that in addition to suggesting, via the swirls and blooms of color, the polyphony of the contents, the painting evokes such a tangible sense of transformation—the way the pink seems to be an almost reconfigured version of the green, the interrupting red, the moody, textural slashes of blue. For me, it speaks, in some nonverbal and very true-feeling way, to the murky, vibrant, and wildly complex early postpartum period.

Rebecca and I worked on this book together for years, and even when it was just an inkling, our vision for it was that however we collected these voices, the object—the book itself—would have to be distinct and beautiful. Something you’d want to put on your bedside table, that you’d be drawn to pick up even when dead tired, that would offer some sensory respite from all the glop and goo of newborn life. I have very precise memories of a book I read to both my children as tiny babies—one they loved—that had this gargantuan dust jacket that was always slipping off or getting folded up or in the wrong place, one more tiny thing I had to track and take care of. One day, it got half stuck under my nursing chair and partially ripped when I tried to pull it out, bending over my infant, which made her cry—and then I was crying, because what if I’d hurt her, and also why was the fucking dust jacket never where it was supposed to be? And wasn’t that my fault somehow? Those days are tough. Notes to New Mothers will have no dust jacket. The tactility of Kristen’s painting will work so brilliantly as paper-over-board, and Sarahmay’s sensitive way of setting off the type means that no amount of baby drool or sticky fingerprints or spilt milk will obscure the title. The book can take it, just as the mother can (even if she thinks she sometimes can’t).

Sarahmay Wilkinson: It was such a pleasure to collaborate with authors Rebecca Knight and Julie Buntin in the creative process for their cover. It was important to our team to create something intimate and elevated while also lasting and durable; a gift that would live happily on a new parent’s chaotic nightstand. Kristen Diederich’s painting brought a sense of tenderness, atmosphere, and complexity that felt exactly right for the project. As a new-ish mum, I devoured this book, but really, truly, anyone who has ever been born should read this book.

Kristen Diederich: While painting, I often recall all the times I must have been held as a child, how these levels of care are linked and inseparable from the creative process, which itself is an act of mothering an idea into the world. In my case, these aspects of care are reflected in the image itself through the materiality of paint and mark making.

Growing up surrounded by creative women—a grandmother who crafted with her hands, an aunt who was a literature and theater teacher, and a mother, Tammy, who is a committed painter—gave rise to my interest in the arts.

For the past 10 years, I have been writing a single, continuous poem whose lines become titles for my paintings—among them, “Fuchsia is Slain by Observable Facts,” an abstract landscape of saturated pinks, blues, and greens, floral elements rising and dissolving through layers of glaze. I was delighted that this painting was chosen for this project because the story of my art practice is so deeply linked to my own mother.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Notes to New Mothers” edited by Rebecca Knight and Julie Buntin appeared first on Electric Literature.

After years of caring full-time for the children of the rich and the famous, our narrator has been struck, finally, with baby fever. Over a drink with sympathetic friends, she lists all the reasons why she wants to have a baby, beginning with a story about the intoxicating, abusive relationship with an ex-wife that she barely survived. She ponders how to fill the gaping void left in the wake of such horrific domestic violence. What’s the next most violent thing a woman can do to herself? she asks. Have a baby.

Soon, her story opens other doors to the past—the seemingly idyllic childhood she spent under her father’s roof; the mentorship, and judgment, of female writers whose children she has reared; and the man, her first love, who now seems to be offering her a second chance. Each unraveling thread reveals the complex tangle of thrill and pain, tradition and progress that has led her to this moment, this calling. Is it time for her to become a mother?

K Chiucarello’s stunningly original debut novel explores the brutality of gendered violence, including the gossip that polices women’s choices and the conventions that determine which women have the right to tell their story, and how. With wit, candor, and unprecedented nuance, Nanny Nanny upends every expectation of a book about motherhood, queering the biological clock and subverting narrative bounds.

Here is the cover, designed by Vivian Lopez Rowe with art by Julie Blackmon:

K Chiucarello: Even before I sold Nanny Nanny to Ecco, my editor, Deborah Ghim, and I talked about cover ideas. We are both very visual people and we wanted our mutual tastes to guide the editing process. I remember referencing Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai, Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season, Joy Williams’ Harrow—sparse covers where something was askew but the title read as grounded, assertive, nearly screaming. After we officially moved into editing, I created a mood board of original art work for more inspiration.

There was a lot of Robin F. Williams, Caroline Walker, Louise Giovanelli, Vanessa Baird, Rosalind Nashashibi, Genieve Figgis pinned—visual artists that focus a lot on gender performance and/or domestic labor. Something that Deborah and I spoke about often was that we didn’t want the cover to tip over into horror in any type of way, which became a difficult line to tread when pulling images.

When Julie Blackmon’s “Patio” landed it felt like the singular solution. In the expert hands of Vivian Lopez Rowe, our brilliant cover designer, Blackmon’s photograph perfectly encapsulates the world of NANNY NANNY. It was the lone photograph of the cover options but there was something nearly Kubrick-esque drawing me into the final product: the symmetry of the title, the geometry of the home, the flat perspective. There’s a lot of mirroring that happens in the novel—hetero versus queer relationships, city versus rural landscapes, the narrator’s ex-wife versus the children that the narrator nannies, etc. The little girl looking at an image of herself in the great hopes of finding an adult or something comforting inside, seeking out but being trapped in your own image or making, it spoke to the most major themes of the novel. The adult in the photograph that is reading a magazine entitled NEW YOU, the spiraled hose, the off-centered fire ablaze were little cherries on top.

Vivian Lopez Row: The publishing team and I agreed that we wanted the cover to depict motherhood, but not in a way that glamorized it or was idealistic about it. Early on I looked at paintings—to match the story, the women in them looked overwhelmed and exhausted. I then looked at photography and found the perfect cover image by Julie Blackmon. Her work blends the mundane and surreal moments of domesticity. This particular image, “Patio,” has a nostalgia that can relate to the main character’s childhood or her time as a nanny. It also shows a very real moment of exhausted distraction; even as a fire on the grill is blazing unattended, it’s like she has gotten used to the chaos in her life. For type, I went bold. I really wanted a contrast to the quieter elements of the cover image and to work with the fire to heighten the drama.

The post Exclusive Cover Reveal of “Nanny Nanny” by K Chiucarello appeared first on Electric Literature.