Cover Reveals

An isolated rocket zooms over deep, watercolor blues of outer space, reflecting the loneliness, diversity, and resilience of our planet

*Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of *Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth, which will be published on June 9th, 2026 by Graywolf Press. You can pre-order your copy here.

An end-of-the-world love story, an epic full of pathos and humor, asking what can be saved of our planet.

Well, that’s about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in Earth 7, her latest electrifying novel, life—and love—persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.

Earth 7 is the tale of two women who meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth has severely depopulated. Some humans have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that someone in the future may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do, especially if they can do it together?

By the end of Unferth’s wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. Is all matter conscious? Do any living beings die? Earth 7 is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers.

“Earth 7 is an epic sci-fi masterpiece and a love letter to the totally lush, and shockingly diverse, life-forms of our planet. I adore this book. Everyone who lives on planet Earth should read it.” — Rita Bullwinkel, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Headshot

“An electric, hilarious, and harrowing story of fractured technological identities and interdimensional exile in a shattered future. With her signature absurd genius, Deb Olin Unferth has created a shocking and moving speculation that I suspect breaks new ground in climate fiction.”—Jessica Anthony, author of The Most

Here is the cover, designed by Vivian Lopez Rowe, with original artwork by Elizabeth Haidle:

Deb Olin Unferth: I was starting to write a new book, which meant I was taping newspaper clippings to my wall, images I liked, when I received an envelope in the mail from my friend, the illustrator Elizabeth Haidle. Some years back, she and I collaborated on our graphic novel, I, Parrot. Now, she was making a book with her brother, Paul David Mascot, an adaptation of a science fiction story by Philip K. Dick first published in 1953. The envelope contained several prints of watercolors she was doing for the book. Gorgeous and strange and funny. Lonely, surreal landscapes, a single human walking through. A man boarding a spacecraft carrying a little suitcase like he was getting on a bus. I was especially taken by one of the earth, a rocket shooting off it, zipping around in a few impossible loops, moth-like, skimming and swerving, batting the moon, and flying away. I taped them all to my wall amid the newspaper clippings.

As I wrote the book, gradually many of the images came down. Either I removed them or they unstuck themselves and fluttered to the floor. Soon only a few remained: a man emerging from very blue water. A barren landscape of rocks. A figure perched on a small, capsized boat. Plus, a single watercolor print by Elizabeth: Earth and its springy rocket.

I stared at that handful of images as I wrote and they became the spine of the story. Human, water, rock, sky. Motion, journey. That deep blue outer space.

And Elizabeth’s watercolor became the cover. You can see some of earth’s continents, not precise drawings but a gesture, a quick sketch that to me spoke of our incredible planet and of civilization, all its mistakes, all its successes, the land a shining white, the water a blue gray. Soaring away from it is a single mechanical representative, a little rocket. I love the energy. It feels daring and smart, but also playful and funny. It’s got nerd-girl energy. And it’s philosophical, existential, lonely. Earth’s gravity waylaid, humanity so small. Who is leaving on that rocket and why? Who is left behind, besides earth itself?

The brilliant book designer Vivian Lopez Rowe did a great job. I love the hand-lettered font, how tactile it feels. The orange adds a bold, electric edginess to the design. The words shimmer on the dark blue.

Elizabeth Haidle: The blue background was created with liquid watercolor dyes, and the elements were scanned, cut out, and added digitally. My brother and I collaborated from a distance on a series of images, sending the files back and forth and improving things as we went. It was actually a really wonderful collaborative experience.

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