This Year's Ghost

by Michael Chin

In This Year's Ghost, the dead, the impossible, and the unthinkable gather-not to be ignored, not trifled with, and they will break your heart at every turn. Absurd, hilarious, and carnal, these are everyday ghost stories. Ghosts are the living, and we are the spirits inhabiting their journeys through all that it is to be human. Jason Teal, the author of We Were Called Specimens, says This Year's Ghost is "A triumphant collection of stories by a writer whose strong vision balances the darkness and light of our modern world refreshingly and enchantingly. This Year's Ghost's worlds of puzzles and heartbreak may often contain fantastic beings and futuristic technologies, but they capture the ubiquitous need for connection and affirmation at the core of human experience. Michael Chin is a highly transportive writer whose other books should move to the top of your queue immediately afterwards."

158 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 10, 2025

About the author

Born and raised in Utica, New York and currently living in Nevada with his wife and son, Michael Chin is an alum of the MFA program in creative writing at Oregon State University and the MA program in writing at Johns Hopkins University. He has previously published or has work forthcoming in over 200 different publications, including The Normal School, Passages North, Barrelhouse, Hobart, Front Porch Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, and Prairie Schooner online. He has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize (2016, 2017, 2018), Best New Poets (2016), and Best of the Net honors (2011, 2016, 2017), and had work on the Longlist for Wigleaf's Top 50 Very Short Fictions (2017). He is an Assistant Professor of English at UNLV.