Overview

“The debut by Pushcart-winning short story writer Kim Samek blends subversive humor with the absurd in a memorable collection of stories. . . . Recommended for fans of Ben Loory and Aimee Bender.”—Los Angeles Times (20 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2026) A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Alta, The Millions, Debutiful, Lit Hub, The Seattle Times A woman's limbs disappear into “the cloud” during wildfire-induced power outages. A lonely DoorDasher accidentally becomes the star of someone else's reality show, forced to resolve her fraught relationship with her immigrant mother for the narrative. Succumbing to a widely denied pandemic, a gymnastics coach must carry her heart around in a Mason jar, using her disability to become an influencer. Two chronically single, chronically ill people become soulmates, only to discover their meeting was algorithmically orchestrated by ad tech. Other dramas unfold as icebergs melt and island-sized trash heaps burn. Threaded with sharp social commentary, these stories question the engineering of human connection through technology, social media, and reality television. Warm, endlessly strange, and filled with dark yet hopeful humor, I Am the Ghost Here casts familiar crises of contemporary life in a wholly unique light, offering a pathway towards our shared humanity even as reality comes crumbling down.

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Reviews

“Like a season of Black Mirror but less bleak and more melancholy, each story in this collection offers a door into an inventive new world, strange and familiar at the same time. Every page, every line offers possibility, surprise, humor, or heartbreak. . . . An exciting new voice.”—Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown “Beguiling and funny and desperately, delicately human . . . I found these stories as irresistible as a pack of time-traveling mints.”—Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Same Bed, Different Dreams “I adored this collection of surreal stories, which feel both of-the-moment and timeless. Bizarre, very funny, and emotionally authentic, these stories pulse with pathos and surprising insights into what it feels like to be human . . . A vital addition to the canon of weird fiction.”—Kate Folk, author of Sky Daddy

“The pages of I Am the Ghost Here are as electric as a live wire: dangerous in the most thrilling possible way. The world of these stories isn’t quite like ours—but is it any more absurd than the one we’re in, honestly? You might start a story thinking you’re reading about, say, a woman who’s turned into scrambled eggs; you’ll end it realizing that, all along, you were reading about yourself.”—Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of This Is Salvaged “Like a season of Black Mirror but less bleak and more melancholy, each story in this collection offers a door into an inventive new world, strange and familiar at the same time. Every page, every line offers possibility, surprise, humor, or heartbreak. . . . An exciting new voice.”—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown “Beguiling and funny and desperately, delicately human . . . I found these stories as irresistible as a pack of time-traveling mints.”—Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Same Bed, Different Dreams “I adored this collection of surreal stories, which feel both of-the-moment and timeless. Bizarre, very funny, and emotionally authentic, these stories pulse with pathos and surprising insights into what it feels like to be human . . . A vital addition to the canon of weird fiction.”—Kate Folk, author of Sky Daddy “Samek debuts with a striking collection of fantastical and speculative stories about conformity, technology, and the limits of bodily autonomy. . . . Throughout, Samek elicits genuine pathos and offers astute social commentary. This dazzles.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “Samek slyly erodes our sense of what’s real and what’s not to reveal the cost to humanity when we offer our lives up for entertainment, allow algorithms to shape our desires, and consume so ravenously that our whole world, including our own bodies, are being polluted by plastic. . . . Smart, dryly witty stories as absurd as they are devastating about life in the 21st century.”—Kirkus Reviews

“The pages of I Am the Ghost Here are as electric as a live wire: dangerous in the most thrilling possible way. The world of these stories isn’t quite like ours—but is it any more absurd than the one we’re in, honestly? You might start a story thinking you’re reading about, say, a woman who’s turned into scrambled eggs; you’ll end it realizing that, all along, you were reading about yourself.”—Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of This Is Salvaged “I don’t think any short story collection provided banger after banger like Samek’s debut collection does. Reading her work is such a thrilling delight. Dive into her Pushcart-winning story ‘Easement’ to tie you over until this book is released. A contender for the Best Short Story Collection of the Decade.”—Debutiful “Like a season of Black Mirror but less bleak and more melancholy, each story in this collection offers a door into an inventive new world, strange and familiar at the same time. Every page, every line offers possibility, surprise, humor, or heartbreak. . . . An exciting new voice.”—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown “Beguiling and funny and desperately, delicately human . . . I found these stories as irresistible as a pack of time-traveling mints.”—Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Same Bed, Different Dreams “I adored this collection of surreal stories, which feel both of-the-moment and timeless. Bizarre, very funny, and emotionally authentic, these stories pulse with pathos and surprising insights into what it feels like to be human . . . A vital addition to the canon of weird fiction.”—Kate Folk, author of Sky Daddy “Samek debuts with a striking collection of fantastical and speculative stories about conformity, technology, and the limits of bodily autonomy. . . . Throughout, Samek elicits genuine pathos and offers astute social commentary. This dazzles.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review “Samek slyly erodes our sense of what’s real and what’s not to reveal the cost to humanity when we offer our lives up for entertainment, allow algorithms to shape our desires, and consume so ravenously that our whole world, including our own bodies, are being polluted by plastic. . . . Smart, dryly witty stories as absurd as they are devastating about life in the 21st century.”—Kirkus Reviews

Author Information

Kim Samek is a half-Thai Emmy-nominated writer and television producer whose credits include MTV’s Catfish and PBS’s WordGirl. She studied German literature and creative writing at Stanford University. Her stories have appeared in Guernica, Ecotone, Electric Literature, North American Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, swamp pink, Gulf Coast, Southern Humanities Review, The Threepenny Review, Story, and ZYZZYVA. Her short fiction has won a Pushcart Prize. A native of Seattle, she lives in Los Angeles.

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