Elizabeth Wetmore is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in Epoch, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Iowa Review, and other literary journals. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, as well as a grant from the Barbara Deming Foundation. She was also a Rona Jaffe Scholar in Fiction at Bread Loaf and a Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, and one of six Writers in Residence at Hedgebrook. A native of West Texas, she lives and works in Chicago.
The Turtle House (2024) Amanda Churchill "A heartbreakingly resonant debut, The Turtle House is a tender, big-hearted story about women, family, and the complicated history of Texas. These characters, and their tentative, flawed stumblings toward grace, will stay with me."
The Farewell Tour (2023) Stephanie Clifford "Beautifully written, wise, and true, The Farewell Tour honors the hard-working, hard-living women of country music--their resilience, courage, and powerful devotion to artmaking. I won't soon forget the indomitable Lillian Waters."
I Have Some Questions for You (2023) Rebecca Makkai "Rebecca Makkai's extraordinary storytelling gifts are on full display in I Have Some Questions for You, a tense, sharply drawn, and impeccably plotted literary mystery andan urgent, propulsive story of the collision of gender, race, and class in a New England boarding school. I loved walking alongside narrator Bodie Kane - angry, obsessive, struggling with her own traumatic memories - in her imperfect attempts to reckon with a past she longs to leave behind."
Perish (2022) LaToya Watkins "I'd be hard-pressed to say what I admire most about LaToya Watkins's debut novel - the nuanced, fully realized characters, the firmly rooted sense of place, or the author's fierce, elegant, and fearless prose. Perish is a heartrending story, urgently told, about family, trauma, and the salvific power of forgiveness and love. Helen Jean Turner and her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will linger in my heart for a long time."
The Last Karankawas (2022) Kimberly Garza "Beautiful, complex, and subversive, The Last Karankawas is an important book about Texas from a powerful new voice in American fiction. I loved it. These characters and their stories will stay with me."
Chevy in the Hole (2022) Kelsey Ronan "Kelsey Ronan is a storyteller of extraordinary wisdom and empathy, devoted to rendering fully the lives of these remarkable characters-their complexities and frailties, their unexpected kindnesses and terrible mistakes, their resilience in the face of nearly insurmountable obstacles. Grace-filled and elegant, Chevy in the Hole is a testament to the long reach of history, and family, and the salvific power of love. What a joy and honor to read a debut novel of such beauty and reach, one that so gloriously bears witness to the stories of a place and its people."
The Comfort of Monsters (2021) Willa C Richards "On its face, The Comfort of Monsters is a riveting page-turner that begs to be read quickly, compulsively. But page by page, this electrifying debut by Willa Richards weaves an increasingly complicated and dark tale of guilt, fury, and the danger of building stories on that shakiest of foundations, memory. Every sentence is a delight in this taut and thrilling debut by Willa Richards."
River, Sing Out (2021) James Wade "With echoes of Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy (and perhaps a smidge of Flannery O'Connor), River, Sing Out is a beautiful, brutal meditation on survival and love in the face of nearly unspeakable violence and depravity in an East Texas community ravaged by the meth trade. Taut, lyrical, and precise, the prose soars in this important new novel by James Wade."
Northern Spy (2021) Flynn Berry "Tense, terrifying, and briskly paced, Flynn Berry’s Northern Spy is not only a thrilling tale of espionage and conflicting loyalties in a deeply divided Northern Ireland, it is also a tender and honest portrayal of those fierce, all-consuming early days of motherhood and the complicated bonds between sisters, mothers, and daughters. A stunning story, beautifully told. I couldn’t put it down."
Girl in the Walls (2021) A J Gnuse "Tense and terrifying, with echoes of Shirley Jackson … a spectacular debut. An elegant meditation on grief, love, and family, this truly extraordinary novel is a page-turner with deeply imagined characters, and A. J. Gnuse’s prose is as sharp and precise and muscular as any I’ve seen."
We Can Only Save Ourselves (2021) Alison Wisdom "What is the cost of leaving, and what is the cost of staying? There are no easy answers in this thrilling debut novel by Texas writer Alison Wisdom, whose taut, steely prose reveals new complexities, questions, and dangers with each turn of the page."
A Crooked Tree (2021) Una Mannion "Beautifully written with tenderness and wisdom, A Crooked Tree is at once an urgent, propulsive study of grief, anger, and family secrets, and a tightly wound coming-of-age story filled with complexity and grace. This is an accomplished book, and Libby Gallagher is one of the best young narrators I've met in years."
