Autumn House Press Rising Writer Prize - Magdalena Is Brighter than You Think

"With care and attention to its brilliantly complicated and kaleidoscopic characters, Magdalena Is Brighter Than You Think is a breathtaking collection that is rooted in place, people, and the full scope of who you are and who you get to be. Exploring queerness, gender, poverty, generational trauma, and the ways in which we are formed and form others, the stories in this collection have the scope of sagas and the intimacy of untold secrets." —K-Ming Chang, author of Exhausted Monsters “Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for April 2026,” Autostraddle “Our Most Anticipated Books of 2026,” Chicago Review of Books “Reads for the Rest of Us: The Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2026,” Ms. Magazine Inventive and emotionally nuanced, Grace Spulak’s debut story collection explores the complexities of gender, queerness, trauma, and resilience through characters who live in the margins and imagine new ways to survive there. Pushing the boundaries of traditional narratives and forms, these stories suggest paths for picking up our pieces—and for transforming and escaping the realities that constrain us. A social worker becomes entangled in the life of a woman she’s meant to investigate, blurring the line between empathy and obsession. A veterinary student communes with a yak that seems to speak to her—if only she could understand its message. And a separating couple embarks on one last errand together to unburden themselves of an unsettling memento. Set in rural New Mexico—a place of isolation, strange beauty, and potential transformation—this collection offers unexpected flashes of grace and hope.