It is highly significant for the literary world and literature itself to explore new themes and have contemporary notions to create a significant era and make it popular. In this article, we are going to read about the 10 best debut authors of January 2022 and the themes and topics they have explored in their writings such as – queer relationships, polyamorous relations, dystopia, coming-of-age experiences, and more.
Jean Chen Ho
(Fiona and Jane – January 4, 2022)
With several published writings in popular magazines and more such as Harper’s Bazaar, GQ, The Rumpus, Apogee, The Georgia Review, and more. Jean Chen Ho is a doctoral candidate in literature and creative writing at Southern California University. Her debut novel Fiona and Jane focuses on two young Taiwanese-American women as they explore identity, friendship, heartbreak, and sexuality over two decades.
Xochitl Gonzalez
(Olga dies Dreaming – January 4, 2022)
Raised in South Brooklyn by maternal grandparents Gonzalez completed her MFA and did her Bachelors from brown University in Fine Arts and Art History. The book is based on themes such as LGBT, heritage, politics, sexuality, secrets, romance, adult fiction, and more. It deals with the life of Olga, a wedding planner struggling with the absent mother, her roots, and her social ambitions during the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Jessamine Chan
(The School for Good Mothers – January 4, 2022)
Chan holds an MFA from the University of Columbia and she is a former reviews editor at popular Publishers Weekly. Her book The School for Good Mothers is a part-prescient and part-dystopian drama that creates complex points regarding parenting with profound feeling and depth. It deals with loneliness, mass surveillance, and measurements of motherhood.
Daphne Palasi Andreades
(Brown Girls – January 4, 2022)
Andreades holds an MFA from the University of Columbia, where she was also awarded a Henfield Prize and a teaching fellowship on Creative Writing. Her debut coming-of-age novel Brown Girls deals with a group of young women of color from the place where the author was born and raised – Queens, NY.
Mark Prins
(The Latinist – January 4, 2022)
Mark Prins lives in NY. He is the latest graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He is also a recipient of fellowships from the Sun Valley Writer’s Conference, the Truman Capote Literary Trust, and the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. This book is a modern-day reimagining of the relation and myth covering Apollo and Daphne. It is an astonishing exploration of ambition, power, and the entangled emotion of love and obsession.
Sue Lynn Tan
(Daughters of the Moon Goddess – January 11, 2022)
Sue Lynn Tan was born in Malaysia and gained her education in France and London. She fell in love with the genre of myth and fantasy when she was a child. This book by Tan is an appealing debut fantasy novel inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, in which the journey of a young woman to rescue her mother pits her against the strongest immortal in the realm.
Gwen E. Kirby
(Shit Cassandra Saw – January 11, 2022)
Kirby is a graduate of Carleton College. She also has a degree in Master of Fine Arts from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from Cincinnati University. This is a short-story collection filled with feminist speculative tales with sharp edges with tinges of irony in it.
Sequoia Nagamatsu
(How High We Go in the Dark – January 18, 2022)
American short-story writer and novelist Nagamatsu has a Master’s Degree from Southern Illinois University in Fine Arts in Creative Writing. This book focuses on genres such as science fiction, dystopian, apocalyptic, and adult fiction. It is about the 2030 virus that evolves humanity which will resemble the sorrowful loss of the close ones to Covid-19 along with the life earlier to the pandemic.
Jo Browning Wroe
(A Terrible Kindness – January 20, 2022)
Wroe has a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from East Anglia University and presently she is working at Lucy Cavendish College as a Creative Writing Supervisor. Her debut novel A Terrible Kindness is set during October 1966 and the central character William Lavery is having the time of her life. But with the approaching evening, the news of a landslide in the coal mine is heard. Lavery decides to volunteer as an embalmer. His work that night will compel him to think of the little kid he was and the failures he has worked so hard to overlook.
Rachel Krantz
(Open – January 25, 2022)
Krantz is one of the founding editors of Bustle and a journalist. She has several awards for working as an investigative reporter with YR Media such as the Peabody Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and more. Her autobiographical debut book Open explores themes such as all kinds of relationships, polyamory, homosexuality, and more.
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