"Beautiful and strikingly original [...] it is thrilling to witness a writer attempting and mostly succeeding at something so ambitious, to feel her reaching for the root of all awe instead of settling for the smaller canvas of identity and biography"
— Mesha Maren, The New York Times
Austyn Wohlers' debut novel Hothouse Bloom was released in August, 2025 by Hub City Press. Drawing immediate comparisons to Rachel Cusk, Han Kang, and Clarice Lispector, Wohlers has already received significant critical acclaim for her book. Perhaps some of the earliest praise comes from Notre Dame MFA alum Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint, who, in 2022, selected the unpublished manuscript as the winner of the 2023 Sparks Prize — an honor awarded to a distinguished graduate of Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program. Myint writes:
“Hothouse Bloom begins inside a fog, and though this fog, in which violence may or may not have occurred, eventually lifts, its memory lingers throughout the novel—quietly, calmly, and uneasily. I had the impression reading this novel that I was viewing an impressionist painting, or occupying the liminal state between sleep and wakefulness. I did not want to break my gaze, or to wake up.”
Garnering attention from Chapter 16 ("Wohlers lets her sentences bleed together like watercolors"), Kirkus Reviews ("Gorgeous, erudite, and ungoverned" and The New York Times ("Beautiful and strikingly original"), the author's philosophical depth and psychological intensity have been contiuously praised by a variety of authors. Blake Butler, author of Molly, compares Wohlers to Reddonet, Lispector, and Tarvoksky, calling her novel "the rare kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large, convalescing fervent depth and resolve where it's gone missing underneath the wearying veneer of our everyday." Designating the novel as a "deranged pastoral," Roy Scranton, author of Impasse, describes Hothouse Bloom as a "shoegazing post-feminist Blithedale Romance, as vivid in its commitment to affect as it is lacerating in its sophistication."
In a September installment of the Southern Review of Books, Nayoung Bishoff argues that Wohlers' novel "critiques the realm of art," noting the compelling way it "delves into the consequences of commodifaction — reflected in the natural world and the self." When asked to place her novel in conversation with other works during an interview with Interlocutor's Nirica Srinivasan, Wohlers replied: "Graciliano Ramos’s São Bernardo, Henri Bosco’s Malicroix, plenty of romantics but maybe especially Blake and Wordsworth, obviously the transcendentalists, Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment, Faulkner’s work, Pavese’s The Moon and the Bonfires, Cortázar’s work, Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance, Ann Quin’s Berg, Virgil’s Eclogues" and others. In an interview with Sydney Bollinger for Write or Die Magazine, Wohlers addresses a supposed "trendy" millenial dream to coexist in solitude with nature:
"As the world becomes more chaotic and overwhelming, it feels like the whole social fabric of things is falling apart and so that idea of simplicity is really attractive. I think you could point to 2008 or to Robert Brenner’s 'The Long Downturn.' We live in a time of diminishing expectations in a decaying world and I think that dream is a dream born out of desperation. 'If only I could go raise goats in the mountains everything would be so easy and not so overwhelming and horrible like it is.'"
In an interview with David DuFour at Hobart, Wohlers reveals the reason she decided the protagonist of Hotbouse Bloom should be a visual artist: "[Anna] sees things like a painter does and compartmentalizes the world into color and light. It was a way of making a character very delicate. I think art is interesting to write about because it’s bound in a certain idealism but scenes can get competitive and toxic. It’s a battle to keep it in the original realm of freedom and pleasure. So it’s part of how Anna sees the world but it’s also a source of pain. Also when I was writing the novel I was having a lot of doubt about my ability to self-actualize as an artist and that came out in some ways. I’m working on a book now about a sculptor." The same interview also concludes with an excerpt from Hothouse Bloom.
Wohlers has spent much of 2025 touring — New York, Vermont, Maryland, DC, Virgina, North Carolina, Georgia— with her debut book. Her next novel will focus on an alcoholic ex-sculptor who's seduced into working on a Christian land art project. You can follow her on Instagram.
Austyn Wohlers was born in Atlanta in 1996. Her first novel, Hothouse Bloom, was called “the rare kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large” by Blake Butler and “strikingly original” by Mesha Maren in The New York Times. Her fiction, poetry, translation, and criticism have appeared in The Baffler, Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. In Baltimore, she ran the Near Future reading series. She is also a musician. Represented by Alex Reubert at HG Literary.