Vague Predictions
& Prophecies
CLASH Books, August 2024
Named one of Electric Literature’s “Most Exciting Debut Story Collections of 2024”
A couple employs exact clones of their partners, but then slowly begin losing their memories. Four boys with cruel intentions come across a field of statuesque women, unaware of the vengeance that awaits them. Paranoia leads a brilliant engineer into creating a language-processing machine that will tell her the truth of others' emotions.
Vague Predictions & Prophecies explores the myriad ways in which desire structures (and destroys) the self, language, and love, questioning the very nature of human connection. Through beautifully written prose, Shen invokes the surreal to create gigantic worlds packed inside deceptively small packages, emphasizing a resounding truth: that our fractured understandings of each other may yet be enough.
Advance Praise
Interviews
In Conversation with Ali Raz - 128 Lit
In Conversation with Emma Burger - Write or Die Magazine
In Conversation with Parker Young - Full Stop Magazine, forthcoming
In Conversation with Rebecca Gransden - X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine
In Conversation with Chi Siegel - Sine Theta Magazine
In Conversation with James Jacob Hatfield - Gemini Sessions
Reviews, etc.
Excerpts
“The Pasture” - Cleveland Review of Books. Edited by Zach Peckham