Are People Out There

by Shane Kowalski

With the publication of 2022’s Small Moods came the arrival of a bizarre and playful voice in contemporary fiction. Garielle Lutz called the stories in that book, “by turns sweet-hearted and ruthless, loopy and doleful, otherworldly and ribald, but always inventively off-kilter and entirely on the mark in their raucous sweeps of human ache and ecstasy.” And someone named Sarah on Goodreads wrote, “This was the weirdest collection of stories I’ve ever read and I was so confused just about all of the time. It was great.”
Now comes Are People Out There, the second collection of short, daring, hilarious, and cursed fictions from Shane Kowalski. It deals in the inimitable Kowalski manner with the usual kinds of people and the lives, or double-lives, they lead: men who steal babies’ identities, women who become dogs to rich couples on the weekend, neighbors who build guillotines in their yards all summer, and teenagers who are haunted forever by their school plays, just to name a few. It is the irreducible strangeness of these stories that compels you, the reader, further into these other lives. If you go far enough, you may even recognize your own life amongst them.

“Shane Kowalski is a magician of short fiction, and this collection shows him at his trickiest, cleverest, and funniest.” — Ling Ma, author of Severance

“Shane Kowalski is one of our finest writers of short fiction. And it becomes truer. In Are People Out There Kowalski thrums in the vein of Daniil Kharms, Russell Edson, and Donald Barthelme and also at once operates prismatically in a register wholly his own.”
—Sebastian Castillo, author of Fresh, Green Life

Genres: Short Stories

154 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2025

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shane Kowalski writes short-shorts. To do this, one must be a good sentence maker. Kowalski's sentences are very good. Each one contains multitudes. To be a good sentence maker, one must know a lot of words. Kowalski clearly does know a lot of words. I had to look one up, but I won't say which one. The last story in this book is longer than most, almost like regular story length. It is a fantastic story, just breathtakingly good. I fell asleep literally a page and a half before the end, but that wasn't the story's fault at all. I was really fighting to stay awake, but it wasn't in the cards, as they say. So, I finished reading it this morning and that last page and a half was so good I almost passed out. Here is just one short paragraph:

Our dreams were like opening your eyes under water. Water with light in it. Swimming pool light. Those shapes we all hope they find inside us when we go away and they carve us open like trees.

I mean, fuck...that last sentence. I just read it over and over in wonderment. Kowalski's sentences are the kind that you may need to read several times to make sure you catch everything. It's like each sentence contains a paragraph worth of content, so they're like those little plastic capsules that when you put them in water they expand into some kind of sponge creature. What this means in the context of Kowalski's sentences is that they accrete to the point where a short-short becomes a regular story.

I decided to read this book when I saw a blurb that mentioned Daniil Kharms and Russell Edson. Those are two names you don't often see in blurbs. They had me at that, they did. I was sold. Having now read the book, I'd say the comparison is intermittently apt. No one can really duplicate Kharms or Edson, but certainly some of Kowalski's short-shorts capture the spirit of those two writers. I can't say I loved every piece in this book, but I did like a lot of its components. For example, I like the title and how it doesn't have a question mark at the end (I always like that), but I wasn't overly fond of the premise of the titular story itself. However, I did like some of the sentences in the story, so I can't honestly say I didn't like the story. See, that is the thing about being a good sentence maker. Eventually, these good sentences accrue to the point where you win over the reader just through brute force. It's a winning strategy for a writer. I think I would like to read this again and see what I may have missed.

[Claire Hopple · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wild, hilarious ride. Most people front-load their collections, but if anything, Shane’s stories keep getting better and better. Long live the micro king.

[Julian Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

shane’s one of the best doing it. the ecstastic and sad and weird and horny and hollow ways of being and seeing! he does so much with so little, gets lyrical from 0 to 100 like a german sports car. Small Moods took over my brain two summers ago and this book has taken over my brain just the same. I love the longer stories, really into what he does over those stretches of time and space. so funny, so bleak and human. this book, man.

[Karl Lam · Rating 4 out of 5]

The speckling of longer stories among the series of shorts read very nicely. Laughed out loud a couple of times at some of the absurd sentences he threw in there. Nice way to wake up for and wind down from the day.

[Kayla Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really awesome and completely absurd collection of short stories. I laughed a lot. Some of my favorite were “Failed Novel Idea”, “Have a Good Sense”, and “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln”, but honestly I loved mosttt of the stories, which I thought were super smart and poignant.

[Lizzie Drexler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank goodness I spotted this in the small press section of Powell’s and flipped open to the part about the expectations of a Blizzard exceeding the reality. Immediate purchase. David Lynch x Julio Torres x my own niche insecurities that only my morning pages from The Artists Way 12 week program know about.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love everything about a Shane Kowalski story. The weirdness, the funny, the uncomfortable, the artful deviancy, and the surprisingly accessible combo of darkness and light. I'm proud to publish this book and his first book, Small Moods, on my little press. And it should be noted that my Future Tense co-editor, Emma, also adores his work. He's our favorite. We're hoping with his recent published story in Harper's Magazine, that more people discover his particular genius.
Are People Out There gives us a bevy of new stories that go even a step further (than Small Moods) into the unknown weirdness of American life and contemporary woe. A big highlight to savor in this one is the final story, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which feels like a story that should be studied by writers and teenagers everywhere.
And yes, the cover spread is an homage to Grace Paley's hardcover edition of Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. This whole package turned out so beautifully.

[Daniel Choe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haha, first! -_-

Small Moods was people standing in line to poke you all over using only their index fingers. Now, those people are back, they brought some friends, and they're poking more earnestly using any finger of their choosing, with a conciliatory, full-handed pat-pat if you become alarmed.

That is to say these stories provide varieties of succor that can keep you going day-to-day. We need these things these days.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shane Kowalski's short stories are like extended prose poems. Funny, perverse, quirky, and unique. Picture Diane Williams doing the tango with Russell Edson. Some of the pieces in 'Are People Out There' are half a page long while other stories are more extended than any of his previous work. I'm a longtime fan of Kowalski's writing, who provides (more or less) one microfiction on Tumblr every day. At the time of writing this, he has 3,321 posts. Get familiar: https://dieddisappointed.com/

[Drew Buxton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking brilliant. Bizarre and hilarious. Nasty and dangerous in a way that is hard to find these days. Reminds me of Oliver Zarandi in the best way possible. Enjoyed them all, but some standouts include the title story, "Fight My Husband," and "For Housewives and Other Perverts."

[Codycvlp · Rating 4 out of 5]

the dynamic in tone is much welcomed, the last story “the assassination of abraham lincoln” was my favorite.

[Aaron Mcilhenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

dark, twisted, and funny

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

We forget, to us, progress is whatever happens.

[Josh Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Shane's writing is funny, odd, and poetic. My favorite story is the last one, "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln." It’s brilliant writing.