Kate Folk

A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life. “Wondrously perverse, often creepy and hilarious, and always sneakily heartbreaking.”—Chang-Rae Lee With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in The New Yorker, a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by “blots,” preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection. Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.

Stories

Out There

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could.

Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry” one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.

Sky Daddy

PRAISE FOR KATE FOLK: 'The literary love child of Kafka and Camus and Bradbury penning episodes of Black Mirror' Chang-Rae Lee 'Disturbing, alluring, dazzling and creepy, Out There is a riveting collection that keeps you enthralled with every page' Claire North ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A fleet of fake men called 'blots' is unleashed onto the dating apps of San Francisco, intent upon conning vulnerable women out of their data, in the exquisite title story Out There. Companion story Big Sur focuses on the reality of the blots' personal experiences. A sculptor, trapped in a skyscraper restaurant when a violent coup erupts below, creates a perfect model of the town as it is destroyed, in A Scale Model of Gull Point A ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the scene of a perilous love triangle, in The Bone Ward A house possesses gigantic human organs that consume the overworked graduate students renting its rooms, in The House's Beating Heart A curtain of void obliterates the world at a steady pace, leaving one woman to decide whom she wants to spend eternity with, in The Void Wife And many more that form Kate Folk's debut collection Out There deftly combines elements of science fiction, horror, and psychological realism to create implicitly political and feminist stories. A darkly comic exploration of our lives in the digital age, the collection depicts a landscape that is eminently of-the-moment, and Folk magnifies the ephemera of living with a healthy slice of absurdity. The thematic pair - Out There and Big Sur - that bookend the collection have since been optioned as a TV series by Hulu, with Kate serving as executive producer and co-writer with Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 'Kate Folk's stories inhabit otherworldly realms where exquisite language and beguiling characters excavate the very nature of love and existence' Adam Johnson 'A literary swordsmith of feline dexterity, very dark and very funny' Lisa Locascio 'The stories in this stunning debut are funny, fearless, and moving... Folk's imagination is uncanny and arresting' Alex McElroy

A thrilling new voice in fiction injects the absurd into the everyday to present a startling vision of modern life, “[as] if Kafka and Camus and Bradbury were penning episodes of Black Mirror” (Chang-Rae Lee, author of My Year Abroad). “Stories so sharp and ingenious you may cut yourself on them while reading.”—Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022—The Millions With a focus on the weird and eerie forces that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary experience, Kate Folk’s debut collection is perfectly pitched to the madness of our current moment. A medical ward for a mysterious bone-melting disorder is the setting of a perilous love triangle. A curtain of void obliterates the globe at a steady pace, forcing Earth’s remaining inhabitants to decide with whom they want to spend eternity. A man fleeing personal scandal enters a codependent relationship with a house that requires a particularly demanding level of care. And in the title story, originally published in The New Yorker, a woman in San Francisco uses dating apps to find a partner despite the threat posed by “blots,” preternaturally handsome artificial men dispatched by Russian hackers to steal data. Meanwhile, in a poignant companion piece, a woman and a blot forge a genuine, albeit doomed, connection. Prescient and wildly imaginative, Out There depicts an uncanny landscape that holds a mirror to our subconscious fears and desires. Each story beats with its own fierce heart, and together they herald an exciting new arrival in the tradition of speculative literary fiction.

Kate Folk

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