Make Your Way Home: Stories

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, and 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 does not 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 as they 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 begins to question what it means when God stops speaking to her. And at the edge of the South as we know it, two sisters seek escape to the North, chasing the promise of a more stable future.

Artfully crafted and steeped in place and history, Carrie R. Moore’s debut collection explores themes of belonging, inheritance, and deep intimacy. It announces an extraordinary new voice in American fiction and invites readers to consider how the past shapes the present—and how today’s choices will echo for years to come.