Watch six of our seven Literary Debutantes read from their debut books in an event hosted by us and Adam Vitcavage of Debutiful. Learn more about the readers below, and get your ticket to our Literary Debutante Ball, which is happening on Friday, May 16th, at Roulette in Brooklyn.
This event was recorded Thursday, May 1st, 2025. Purchase or pre-order the Debutantes’ books here or at your local independent bookstore.
Nini Berndt, author of OS issue #323, “Empress”
Nini Berndt is a graduate of the MFA program in Fiction at the University of Florida. Her work has appeared in The Southampton Review, Subtropics, Split Lip, Passages North, and elsewhere. She teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, where she lives with her wife and son. Her first novel There Are Reasons for This is forthcoming from Tin House in June 2025.
Kerry Cullen, author of OTS issue #33, “Flight Feathers”
Kerry Cullen’s fiction has been published in The Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, One Teen Story, and more. She earned her MFA at Columbia University, and she lives in New York. House of Beth, her first novel, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in July 2025.
Carrie R. Moore, author of OS issue #283, “Naturale”
Carrie R. Moore’s fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, The Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, and other publications. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Community of Writers, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. She earned her MFA in Fiction at the Michener Center for Writers, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature and was the inaugural fellow at the Steinbeck Writers’ Retreat in Sag Harbor, New York. Her debut collection of stories, Make Your Way Home, is forthcoming from Tin House Books.
Lucas Schaefer, author of OS issue #225, “An Oral History of the Next Battle of the Sexes”
Lucas Schaefer’s debut novel, The Slip, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on June 3, 2025. His fiction has appeared in One Story, The Baffler, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his family in Austin, Texas.
Lauren K. Watel, author of OS issue #321, “Trampoline”
Lauren K. Watel’s debut book, a collection of prose poetry entitled BOOK of POTIONS (potion = poem + fiction), was awarded the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, selected by Ilya Kaminsky, from Sarabande Books. Her poetry, fiction, essays, and translations have appeared widely. Watel’s prose poem honoring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was set to music by Pulitzer-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and the piece premiered at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 2021. A native of Dallas, TX, she lives in Decatur, GA, home of the intrepid Decatur High School Marching Band.
Julian Zabalbeascoa, author of OS issue #286, “A Life Anew”
Julian Zabalbeascoa’s debut novel What We Tried to Bury Grows Here was published in November 2024 by Two Dollar Radio. Among other journals, his stories have been published in American Short Fiction, Boulevard, The Common, Electric Literature, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, One Story, and Ploughshares. A dual citizen of Spain and the US, he was born and raised in California’s Central Valley. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing in Madrid from the University of New Orleans and taught at various institutions throughout California before moving to Boston, where he now teaches in the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and leads annual study abroad programs to Donostia-San Sebastian, Havana, Madrid, and Paris.
