Brooklyn based novelist Julie Buntin is already known through the book industry as one of the hottest debut novelists of 2017.

Her first book, Marlena, released June 15, follows the dysfunctional friendship between 15 year old Cat and her neighbour Marlena as they turn the corner into adulthood, and then Cat's life 20 years later as she struggles to come to terms with Marlena's death. Buntin, originally from northern Michigan, has been praised by writers such as Lorrie Moore, who described Marlena as 'a novel of deep and exquisite intelligence, humor, and riveting sensitivity', while Jonathan Safran Foer, who Buntin 'Writes the kind of piercing, revelatory sentences you have to read to whomever is near'.