José Daniel Alvior and Nidhi Arora to publish with Unbound Firsts

José Daniel Alvior and Nidhi Arora are the latest authors selected to publish with Unbound Firsts, Unbound’s imprint for debut writers of colour. 

Launched in 2021, Unbound publishes two writers per year from a select open call through Unbound Firsts. Upon release in 2025, Alvior and Arora’s titles will become the fifth and sixth to be published under the imprint.

Alvior’s Seven Days in Tokyo, represented by Sara O’ Keeffe at Aevitas Creative Management, will be published in April 2025. It is described as a “tender debut exploring queer love and longing that develops into an affecting meditation on what it means to belong somewhere, to someone”. 

Alvior said: said: “Being an Unbound Firsts title is finding a deserved place on the shelves for unique storytellers and their stories.”

Arora’s The Things We See will be published in June 2025. Unbound said of the title: “In this smart, funny and contemporary family saga, Sumi’s passion for quantum physics and observations of her new neighbourhood collide in unexpected ways.”

Arora said it was an “honour” to have been selected for publication. “Thank you for creating a much-needed space for writers of colour to share our stories with the world,” she continued. Both titles will be published as audiobooks by W F Howes.

Alvior and Arora join Solange Burrell (Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace), Paul David Gould (Last Dance at the Discotheque for Deviants), Iqbal Hussain (Northern Boy) and Zahra Barri (Daughers of the Nile) in the line up of debut writers published under Unbound Firsts, which was shortlisted for the FutureBook Awards in 2022. 

Editorial lead for Unbound Firsts Aliya Gulamani said: “What we want to achieve with Unbound Firsts is platform brilliant fiction from talented debut writers of colour. Both of these books do exactly this and I’m so excited that we’ll be publishing Seven Days in Tokyo by José Daniel Alvior and The Things We See by Nidhi Arora next year.”