DESCRIPTION:
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.
Kate Folk lives in San Francisco, Her short stories and essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The New Yorker, One Story, McSweeney’s, ZYZZYVA, New York Times Magazine, Granta, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Conjunctions, and Tin House, among others. Her first, unpublished, novel HOUNDSTOOTH is under TV option with AMC. As of last year, her team has officially closed on a TV series deal with Hulu, with Kate as an Executive Producer and co-writing with Sharon Horgan (of “Catastrophe”).
Further reading
Read: Out There, The New Yorker
Review: Flipping the gender script on menacing literary androids, LA Times
Prompt: Write about an eventful trip you’ve taken where things were never the same afterwards.