2023 Debut Authors

Sixteen-year-old Dirt, a retired elite female fighter, must enter the South God Bow tournament to protect her found family of younger sisters and their beloved Mud Fam.

"Leila is crushed when Dev, her boyfriend of four years, breaks up with her right before graduation. Just when she's thinking she wasted her entire high school experience on a dead-end relationship, her best friend Bree reminds her that Last Chance Dance is just around the corner. A high school tradition, the Last Chance Dance gives all the students one last opportunity to find love before they graduate. All Leila has to do is submit three unrequited...

Seventeen-year-old Gael, a trans boy, learns to let his walls down while finding community, discovering his sexuality, falling in love, and navigating difficult family situations.

Growing up in 1970s Ohio, Mexican American brothers Pedro and Daniel, who are not like other boys, manage an abusive home life, school, coming out, first loves, first jobs, and the AIDS epidemic, leaning on each other always and forever.

"These days, Tre Brun is happiest when he is playing basketball on the Red Lake Reservation high school team--even though he can't help but be constantly gut-punched with memories of his big brother, Jaxon, who died in an accident. When Jaxon's former teammates on the varsity team offer to take Tre under their wing, he sees this as his shot to represent his Ojibwe rez all the way to their first state championship. This is the first step toward his...

In this thrilling Afro-fantasy, the first set in the lush, opulent kingdom of Galla, a girl raised in secret must leave her sheltered rural home for the subtle dangers of the royal court, where she becomes caught up in deadly power struggles and romantic intrigue. Kalothia has grown up in the shadows of her kingdom, hidden away in the forested East after her parents were outed as enemies of the king. Raised in a woodland idyll by a few kindly adult...

After moving cross-country with her sister, Eva Sylvan begins having dreams with devasting real-life effects on the already hostile town people; to stop these dreams and save the town, Eva must investigate her family's magic-filled history and confront her guilt over her father's death.

In the wake of being sexually assaulted by her pastor, sixteen-year-old Amina struggles to regain her footing until she finds the strength within herself to confront her abuser in court. "Sixteen-year-old Amina Conteh has always believed in using her words as her weapon--even when it gets her into trouble. After cursing at a classmate, her father forces her to volunteer at their church with Pastor Johnson. But Pastor Johnson isn't the holy man everyone...

Hanged in an annual sacrificial ritual to Poseidon, seventeen-year-old oracle Leto awakens on an island inhibited by Melantho, a strange immoral girl with oceanic powers, who tells Leto the only way to break Poseidon's curse is to return to Ithaca and kill the prince.

"At the end of the twenty-first century, climate change and famine almost ended humanity--until the discovery of the Klujns, a barbaric, humanoid species with strangely colored eyes and even stranger abilities. Their crystal claws and bones fertilize barren soil, and their tender meat is a super-protein. Klujns are both humans' saviors and natural-born enemies, meant to be hunted and used. When sixteen-year-old Ava finds herself on the wrong side...