Debut Fiction | The Spring 2025 Issue

“There is no way I could have known that my own journey to debuting as a published author would take nearly two decades from those days in Paule Marshall’s class,” guest editor Cleyvis Natera reflects in her introduction letter. Aster(ix) published a sample of her novel in 2019, which helped Cleyvis find an agent. Her first book, Neruda on the Park, was published in 2022 by Ballantine Books.

We are thrilled to welcome Cleyvis on a full circle journey to edit this issue. She writes, “The most daring and exciting work happening in fiction today is found in the pages of new writers.”

In this issue, we highlight emerging writers in fiction through short stories and excerpts from debut novels. Featuring work by Zabe Bent, Aimee R. Cervenka, Kleaver Cruz, Nicole Counts, Dionne Ford, Pilar García Guzmán, Ellen Hagan, Alba Delia Hernández, Cristina Herrera Mezgravis, Anna Kreienberg, Leo Martinez, Paloma Nieto, Frankie Ochoa, Naima Ramos-Chapman, and Sabrina Shie.

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all of the pieces are available to read online for free below

Letter From The Editor

Cleyvis Natera

My fascination with debut fiction took hold during the early months of my graduate study in creative writing. Though some of my professors insisted on pointing us deep into the canon, to a giant’s later work as the map that would aid (and guide) us in discovering that brilliance within our own work, it was the late Paule Marshall who introduced the wisdom held in the wild possibility inherent in a debut writers’ first work. Writers like Edwidge Danticat, Junot Díaz, and Jamaica Kincaid—people whose work burned with a distinction that glistened with beauty and pain, por supuesto, but also, irreverence, humor, joy, surprise. These are the ones whose break from convention, she would say in her stern and very serious tone, stems from their loyalty to their unique voice, to their unwavering fixation in telling a truth only they know based on their own lived experience. It was in her craft of fiction class that it first occurred to me that boldness and ambition could be nestled in the unexpected curve of a sentence. But that it also ought to reflect something that hasn’t yet been said in a centuries-old conversation writers have been having with readers, with each other. She assured us that much remained unsaid and she fixed her gaze on me. And looking around that classroom in the west village, I understood the invitation, an obligation and a charge.

There is no way I could have known that my own journey to debuting as a published author would take nearly two decades from those days in Paule Marshall’s class. Aster(ix) is the first journal that published my fiction in print, back in 2019. It would take another year to sell my debut novel, another three to have it meet the world. My editor first came across my work by reading that excerpt of Neruda on the Park in Aster(ix). The invitation to guest edit this issue, which will be printed a few months before my second novel is published and I’m forced to leave the world of the debut writer behind forever, is profoundly meaningful to me. Yet, also, bittersweet. Over the last twenty years, my fascination with debut fiction has fastened into devotion: the most daring and exciting work happening in fiction today is found in the pages of new writers.

The fifteen writers selected for this issue are remarkable in such unique ways. Yet, there are throughlines. A concern many of these stories share is a central fixation with loss: for the language, country and family Nina may never know in Frankie Ochoa’s mesmerizing “Citizen of Memory,” for the loved ones who have left us in the devastating “Opa’s Wake” by Cristina Herrera Mezgravis and the soul-stirring “I Find My Dead Father at the Local Supermarket” by Pilar García Guzmán. The complexities of friendship and families—by blood and those made by circumstances—are illuminated to terrific effect in Sabrina Shie’s “Swimmers,” as well as Kleaver Cruz’s “Un Buen Tiempo,” and Alba Delia Hernández’s “Who We Walk With.” I laughed aloud, delighted at the spiritual intervention required to bring two lovers together in Leo Martinez’s polyphonic “Say A Lil Prayer.” I was inspired into deep contemplation by the intertextual musings in Anna Kreienberg’s “Schlegel’s Fragments.” I was moved by the beauty of the poetic lyricism in Nicole Counts’ “Collarbone & Shoulder.” “The Attic is Missing” by Aimee R. Cervenka, startled me the way only good fiction can, which is to say, it woke me up. Naima Ramos-Chapman’s “Spell it Different, Take Up Space” was fresh and exciting. Ellen Hagan’s “Bored of Education” got me all the way riled up. Dionne Ford’s “Real Americans” has haunted me since I read it; I keep thinking about those two women, that flag. And, most seriously, an issue wouldn’t be me if it didn’t make the reader horny—thank you, Paloma Nieto, for your deep exploration of loneliness in “San Antonio de Padua, Patron Saint of Single Ladies.” In the closing story, Zabe Bent’s “Living in America,” I was heartbroken when a child of immigrants decides he no longer wants to visit his parents’ home country—and wondered what kinds of futures we all may make for ourselves.

Because of the amount of rejection I’ve faced in my life as a writer, I also want to take a moment to speak to the hundreds of writers whose submissions were not selected. Stay on it. Don’t give up. Reading your work, collectively, has cemented my devotion for emerging writers and debut writers into awe even as I prepare to leave your midst. Take it from me. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, you are incredibly close.

I hope you each love this issue as much I loved selecting each individual story and novel excerpt. It was as if Paule Marshall leaned over my shoulder from that other place, as I landed on each choice. Persistent, proud. A unique voice, she said, an unwavering fixation with telling the truth.