READ AN ACCLAIMED NOVELIST’S DEBUT STORY COLLECTION

n her highly anticipated new book, Ling Ma, who teaches writing at the University of Chicago, has penned eight hilarious and haunting stories about the frequent dissatisfactions of contemporary life. Like her critically acclaimed — which balanced millennial coming-of-age workplace satire with full-on zombie apocalypse horror in a world stricken by a plague that causes people to work themselves to death — , out September 13, crosses the absurd with the appalling, simultaneously evoking both the fantastical and the all too real. The collection envelopes you in a dream-like ambience that shades into nightmare, tackling with wit and weird wisdom everything from abusive ex-boyfriends to immigration, from academia to unexpected pregnancy. Here, she discusses her new work.