Make Your Way Home: Stories - Paperback

by Carrie R. Moore (Author)

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree

Finalist for the 2026 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and the 2026 Southern Book Prize

Longlisted for the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award, the 2026 PEN America Open Book Award, and the 2026 Story Prize

Named A Best Fiction Book of the Year by the Washington Post, ELLE, Chicago Review of Books

Named a Best Debut of 2025 by Debutiful

"Gorgeous, resonant, and startling."―Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

A debut collection of stories set across the American South, featuring characters who struggle to find love and belonging in the wake of painful histories. How can you love where you come from, even when home doesn't love you back?

In eleven stories that span Florida marshes, North Carolina mountains, and Southern metropolitan cities, Make Your Way Home follows Black men and women who grapple with the homes that have eluded them. A preteen pregnant alongside her mother refuses to let convention dictate who she names as the father of her child. Centuries after slavery separated his ancestors, a native Texan tries to win over the love of his life, despite the grip of a family curse. A young deaconess, who falls for a new church member, wonders what it means when God stops speaking to her. And at the very end of the South as we know it, two sisters seek to escape North to freedom, to promises of a more stable climate.

Artfully and precisely drawn, and steeped in place and history as it explores themes of belonging, inheritance, and deep intimacy, Carrie R. Moore's debut collection announces an extraordinary new talent in American fiction, inviting us all to examine how the past shapes our present―and how our present choices will echo for years to come.

Author Biography

Carrie R. Moore's fiction has appeared in One Story, New England Review, The Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and other publications. A recipient of the Keene Prize and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Steinbeck Writers' Retreat, she earned her MFA at the Michener Center for Writers. Born in Georgia, she currently resides in Texas with her husband.