We're terrifically excited about our Spring  2013 Discover Great New Writers list, 14 titles carefully chosen from hundreds of submissions. By turns exhilarating and heartbreaking, lyrical and thought-provoking, these are the amazing true stories, the unforgettable memoirs laced with unexpected humor, and the dazzling novels that the Discover selection committee members can't stop talking about.

Winner Parker is having a very, very bad day in Diana Wagman's audacious novel, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets (Discover, Holiday 2012). Locked inside a sweltering house in an LA 'burb with an enormous iguana, Winnie's trying to figure out why she's been taken before her kidnapper goes completely off the rails. Here, Diana takes readers behind the scenes in a guest post for the Discover blog.

The Discover selection committee readers weren't alone in their praise for Dan Josefson's debut novel, That's Not a Feeling (Holiday '12) -- We asked Dan about three books he frequently recommends, and this is what he said...

Jonathan M. Katz's first book, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster is what the Discover submission committee  calls "1 AM reading"- an incredibly compelling narrative worth staying up all night to finish.  We're turning our first post of the new year over to the former AP correspondent who was the only full-time American Reporter on the ground when an earthquake devestated Haiti in January, 2010.

Mark Binelli, author of Holiday '12 Discover pick Detroit City is the Place to Be -- an incisive and  wryly comic exploration of an American City left for dead -- discusses what he found when he moved back home to  Detroit and what the city really needs, among other things, with Discover Great New Writers.

We're not the only readers who fell in love with Ayana Mathis's terrific debut The Twelves Tribes of Hattie --this sweeping story of quiet heroism and imperfect family love is the second pick of Oprah’s Book club 2.0®. In this exclusive Q&A with Discover Great New Writers, Ayana discusses the profound changes brought by The Great Migration, what it feels like to be alone in a crowd, and her "hard to love" character, Hattie Shepard.

Cheryl Strayed calls Gregory Martin's memoir,  Stories for Boys, "moving, brave, and unforgettable."  Martin discusses when memoirs go wrong, the unravelling of secret lives, writing about family (and how much children need to be told), among other things with Discover Great New Writers.

Diana Wagman, author of Holiday 2012 pick The Care & Feeding of Exotic Pets discusses starting over, being drawn to stories of endurance and survival, and finding liberation and inspiration as a writer in Los Angeles - among other things - with Discover Great New Writers.

Dan Josefson, author of the Fall 2012 pick That's Not a Feeling, discusses his debut novel and more with Discover Great New Writers.

"...We can talk all we want about how corruption or indifference robs people of opportunity-of the immense talent our societies squander-but if we don't really grasp the intelligences of those who are being denied, we're not going to grasp the potential that's being lost." -- Katherine Boo

Joanna Luloff, author of the Holiday 2012 selection The Beach at Galle Road reflects on the influences on her debut story collection, "a kaleidoscope of vantage points, offering reflection not only on the Sri Lankan civil war, but on the always shifting understanding of home and family, of connection and dislocation, of the past’s weight on the present."

The Holiday 2012 Discover Great New Writers season begins today, and for the first time in a long while, our narrative nonfiction selections – a mix of memoir and reportage -- outnumber fiction.

Bee Wilson, author of Holiday 2012 pick Consider the Fork discusses the "single greatest improvement ever to occur in kitchen technology", the one item cooks tell her they really love, and the graphic novel her teenage son convinced her to read, among many other things, with Discover Great New Writers.

Ben Fountain, Cheryl Strayed, and Junot Diaz are just a few of the Discover alums appearing at the Texas Book Festival this weekend in Austin, and we have the full run-down here.

In this smart, freewheeling conversation, Scott Hutchins, author of Fall '12 Discover pick A Working Theory of Love, and Justin Torres, author of Fall '11 Discover pick We the Animals (and newly named to the National Book Foundation's prestigious 5 Under 35 list) swap working tips and literary theory,  and riff on J. M. Coetzee and The Great Gatsby, birth order and method acting, among other things.

"My father's family landed in 1942 Los Angeles as if by immaculate conception, unburdened by the past." Joe Mozingo reveals his family's incredible -- and very American -- story in his memoir, The Fiddler on Pantico Run, and he discusses his "funny last name," the legacies of race, and how his family's own lost history speaks to us all, among other things, with Discover Great New Writers.

Congratulations are due to a host of Discover alums nominated for 2012 National Book Awards and named to the 5 Under 35 list...

I've mentioned before that I have, hands down, the best job in the book business today - but  Dan Josefson's day job comes a close second, as he explains in this guest post for the Discover blog.

Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - a reboot of the classic quest narrative that we can't stop recommending  to readers of all ages - talks to Discover Great New Writers about being inspired by William Gibson, the differences between writing for the web and writing books, and playing in a "technological  border-zone," among other things.                    

"Schwalbe has done something extraordinary: made a personal journey public in the most engaging, funny, and revealing way possible. It was a true meditation on what books can do." -- Discover alum Edmund de Waal (The Hare with Amber Eyes) on 2012 Discover pick The End of Your Life Book Club. Will Schwalbe talks to Discover Great New Writers about using books as conversational shorthand, how reading is doing something, and wanting to continue the conversation about books.

Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Charles Yu, author of the new story collection, Sorry Please Thank You, and 2010 Discover pick How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe talk about first-person vs. third-person narration, How Fiction Works by James Wood, and creating entirely new worlds with text, among other things.

Andrew Porter, author of the Fall '12 Discover pick In Between Days - discusses starting points, the differences between writing short stories and novels, and how his characters informed the plot of his luminous debut novel, among other things, with Discover Great New Writers.

"Beautifully planned and perfectly executed." "Hilarious." "Delightful, readable, believable." "Funny and evocative." "An impressive debut." Just some of what people are saying about David Abrams and his novel, Fobbit.

"...Even now I'm not prone to extreme expeditions. I'm more comfortable in a cardigan than in a survival suit. I'd rather cook dinner than climb a mountain. And yet that's exactly what I did for almost twenty years, day after day, in spite of my natural inclinations. Planting trees was my day job while I was learning to write. But certainly there are better ways to make a living..." Charlotte Gill on planting trees, learning to write, and living in a world where "beauty and discomfort existed in equal measure" in a guest post for the Discover blog.

"The booksellers I've met in the last few years, both here and elsewhere, at stores large and small, are without exception bright, passionate, book-eating people. I think of booksellers as emissaries of higher truths, of beauty and wisdom and humor and, above all, pleasure." Novelist -- and bookseller -- Emma Straub riffs on the pleasures of putting books in readers' hands in a guest post.

Highlights from the media's coverage of Junot Díaz and his newest story collection, This is How You Lose Her.

Ayad Akhtar's acclaimed debut novel, American Dervish - a Spring 2012 Discover Great New Writers selection - is now available in paperback, and we're republishing "Write What You Know", an original essay he wrote that previously ran as a More in Store feature on Nook.

Héctor Tobar, author of the critically-acclaimed novel The Barbarian Nurseries -- a Holiday 2011 Discover Great New Writers selection now out in paperback -- recommends 3 great reads

Andrew Porter shares the story behind his provocative, gorgeously-written novel, In Between Days (a Fall 2012 pick) with Discover Great New Writers.

In Emma Straub's novel Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures, a Fall 2012 Discover Great New Writers selection, we watch as Elsa Emerson of Door County, Wisconsin evolves into Laura Lamont, Movie Star.  Emma discusses transformation, the glamour of Old Hollywood, and  Megan Mayhew Bergman's Spring 2011 Discover pick, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, among other things, with Discover Great New Writers.