What do you think?
Rate this book
Death and Other Speculative Fictions
A must-read for fans of Carmen Maria Machado, Melissa Febos, and Rachel Yoder.
Caroline Hagood takes the reader on a wild ride, using surreal stories to process the recent death of her father. She mourns by making language work as a time machine to go back and let her father live again, bending space and time to make a place for him, if only in this book that is, above all, a séance. Death and Other Speculative Fictions is for anyone who is grieving the loss of a loved one and searching everywhere for answers.
“Caroline Hagood's vibrant, surprising prose poems speculate on the nature of human connection and loss with astonishing, understated force."
—Idra Novey
“In the aftermath of her father’s death, Caroline Hagood turns to a steady diet of speculative fiction for solace. In this haunting sequence of prose poem meditations, she draws on sources as rich as Charles Yu, Kurt Vonnegut, Madeleine L’Engle, and filmmaker George Miller to construct an alternate mythology to help process her grief. One is gripped by the vulnerability, the raw tenderness of her voice, yet at the same time inspired by its provocations. Hagood shows how the speculative imagination, rather than a mode of escape, is a powerful tool for understanding the real–even rewriting it. “It’s by way of the fabrications, the coming at it from outlandish angles…that we can really see how things are here on earth and how they need to change.” This book charts the road between life and death with furious creativity and vision.”
—Elaine Equi
“Death and Other Speculative Fictions is a gorgeous tribute, a survival diary, a love letter, an ode to a father, to speculative fiction, to time, and to life. It cobbles together from real and imaginary places and the thresholds in between, a means to think about the unthinkable, and to go on with the impossible and beautiful task of living in a world that is both flooding and on fire, while letting go of those we love most, and eventually ourselves. It is full of grief, wonder, awe, hope and love. I was so moved, and my world was expanded by this book. Like Furiosa’s mechanical arm, it is a thing of beauty, born out of loss, pain and necessity.”
—Ananda Lima
“In this beautiful and devastating essay in poems, Caroline Hagood’s voice is fully alive, witty, searching and razor-sharp. What is so unique about this book is how she balances vivid descriptions of 21st century life with searing questions about the relationship between grief and speculative fiction. By reminding the reader how strange everyday life has become and how quotidian science fiction can feel, she reinvigorates hybrid writing, bringing a new liveliness and incision to the genre. An instant classic.”
—Joanna Fuhrman
“Have you looked into the eye of death lately? If you are not ready to do so, no worries, Caroline Hagood has done it for you. In Hagood’s new collection, DEATH AND OTHER SPECULATIVE FICTIONS: An Essay in Prose Poems, you will find a hauntingly thorough scanning on what it means to lose a parent in a 21st Century vernacular that engages Furiosa, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade Runner 2049, and Kurt Vonnegut. For all that we might know, medically and scientifically, about what happens to our bodies when we die, Hagood wants to know more about the plane where death has no meaning and she means to find it. In this new work, Hagood becomes “a student of time, space, creativity and sorrow” so that we may get a glimpse of the beyond.”
—Jiwon Choi
Caroline Hagood takes the reader on a wild ride, using surreal stories to process the recent death of her father. She mourns by making language work as a time machine to go back and let her father live again, bending space and time to make a place for him, if only in this book that is, above all, a séance. Death and Other Speculative Fictions is for anyone who is grieving the loss of a loved one and searching everywhere for answers.
“Caroline Hagood's vibrant, surprising prose poems speculate on the nature of human connection and loss with astonishing, understated force."
—Idra Novey
“In the aftermath of her father’s death, Caroline Hagood turns to a steady diet of speculative fiction for solace. In this haunting sequence of prose poem meditations, she draws on sources as rich as Charles Yu, Kurt Vonnegut, Madeleine L’Engle, and filmmaker George Miller to construct an alternate mythology to help process her grief. One is gripped by the vulnerability, the raw tenderness of her voice, yet at the same time inspired by its provocations. Hagood shows how the speculative imagination, rather than a mode of escape, is a powerful tool for understanding the real–even rewriting it. “It’s by way of the fabrications, the coming at it from outlandish angles…that we can really see how things are here on earth and how they need to change.” This book charts the road between life and death with furious creativity and vision.”
—Elaine Equi
“Death and Other Speculative Fictions is a gorgeous tribute, a survival diary, a love letter, an ode to a father, to speculative fiction, to time, and to life. It cobbles together from real and imaginary places and the thresholds in between, a means to think about the unthinkable, and to go on with the impossible and beautiful task of living in a world that is both flooding and on fire, while letting go of those we love most, and eventually ourselves. It is full of grief, wonder, awe, hope and love. I was so moved, and my world was expanded by this book. Like Furiosa’s mechanical arm, it is a thing of beauty, born out of loss, pain and necessity.”
—Ananda Lima
“In this beautiful and devastating essay in poems, Caroline Hagood’s voice is fully alive, witty, searching and razor-sharp. What is so unique about this book is how she balances vivid descriptions of 21st century life with searing questions about the relationship between grief and speculative fiction. By reminding the reader how strange everyday life has become and how quotidian science fiction can feel, she reinvigorates hybrid writing, bringing a new liveliness and incision to the genre. An instant classic.”
—Joanna Fuhrman
“Have you looked into the eye of death lately? If you are not ready to do so, no worries, Caroline Hagood has done it for you. In Hagood’s new collection, DEATH AND OTHER SPECULATIVE FICTIONS: An Essay in Prose Poems, you will find a hauntingly thorough scanning on what it means to lose a parent in a 21st Century vernacular that engages Furiosa, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade Runner 2049, and Kurt Vonnegut. For all that we might know, medically and scientifically, about what happens to our bodies when we die, Hagood wants to know more about the plane where death has no meaning and she means to find it. In this new work, Hagood becomes “a student of time, space, creativity and sorrow” so that we may get a glimpse of the beyond.”
—Jiwon Choi
- GenresPoetry
116 pages, Paperback
Published January 2, 2025
4 people are currently reading
2003 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Hagood
9 books77 followersCaroline Hagood is the author of the poetry books, Lunatic Speaks (FutureCycle Press, 2012), Death and Other Speculative Fictions: An Essay in Prose Poems (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025), and Making Maxine’s Baby (Hanging Loose Press, 2015); the creative nonfiction books, Ways of Looking at a Woman (Hanging Loose Press, 2019) and Weird Girls: Writing the Art Monster (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022); and the novels, Ghosts of America (Hanging Loose Press, 2021) and Filthy Creation (MadHat Press 2023).
Her speculative memoir, Goblin Mode, shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project on September 2, 2025. Her book, Women of Fantasy in Their Own Words: Conversations with Contemporary Authors, edited with Sébastien Doubinsky, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in December 2025.
Her work has appeared in publications including Electric Literature, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, the Kenyon Review, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon, and Elle.
Her speculative memoir, Goblin Mode, shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project on September 2, 2025. Her book, Women of Fantasy in Their Own Words: Conversations with Contemporary Authors, edited with Sébastien Doubinsky, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in December 2025.
Her work has appeared in publications including Electric Literature, Creative Nonfiction, LitHub, the Kenyon Review, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Salon, and Elle.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 12, 2025
Caroline Hagood is an alchemist, transmuting her own raw grief into a catalyst for her fellow bereaved to feel and process, and Death and other Speculative Fictions is the golden grief cave I needed, arriving in my hands both “too soon” and unnervingly timely not weeks after one of my dearest friends unexpectedly died from a sudden heart attack.
Through the language of nonlinear storytelling not unlike that possessed by the extraterritorials in the film “Arrival,” Hagood timehops, chasing her father through the myth and metaphor of their shared literary hero’s and worlds (and mine too), from Bladerunner to Furiosa to Slaughterhouse Five, ongoing others.
This book left me wondering, if I could chew off my own arm to travel back and seek vengeance on the blood lot that took out my friend, would I? (Yes)
Or is there more than what we experience on this side: are we the Tralfamadorian?
If you know grief and are unafraid or hoping to become unafraid, this book is for you.
Through the language of nonlinear storytelling not unlike that possessed by the extraterritorials in the film “Arrival,” Hagood timehops, chasing her father through the myth and metaphor of their shared literary hero’s and worlds (and mine too), from Bladerunner to Furiosa to Slaughterhouse Five, ongoing others.
This book left me wondering, if I could chew off my own arm to travel back and seek vengeance on the blood lot that took out my friend, would I? (Yes)
Or is there more than what we experience on this side: are we the Tralfamadorian?
If you know grief and are unafraid or hoping to become unafraid, this book is for you.
Displaying 1 of 1 review