After the eponymous short story from “Out There” was published in the New Yorker on the eve of the pandemic in March of 2020, Folk was approached to adapt the concept for television by the creator of the British show “Catastrophe.” Originally Hulu was interested, but Folk can’t share any other details. She’s also started on a newfound career path in the film industry. She received a creative writing MFA from University of San Francisco in 2011, and served as an adjunct professor there while participating in fellowships through Stanford and the Headlands Center for the Arts, where she had a studio for three years.Īlthough making ends meet as a fiction writer in San Francisco without a three-night-a-week Uber side hustle might seem impossible, the fellowships and teaching help Folk pay the bills. Raised in Iowa City, Folk moved to SF in 2008 after a brief stint in New York City. “I kind of hated it, but I was very attached to it.” “I was just living in this one room, it felt like it had become a part of me and I was part of it,” Folk said.

One evening, she noticed condensation on the wall by her bed, and she dreamed about putting lotion on it. The idea came from Folk’s experience living for 10 years in an early 1900s rent-controlled studio apartment in the Richmond. San Francisco author Kate Folk's first book, 'Out There,' is a collection of short stories, published by Random House. And people often become transfixed or hypnotized.” “It's almost like the house possesses this agency of its own, or some kind of agenda. “In a bunch of the stories, something will start going wrong with a room or a house,” Folk said, in an interview outside the Richmond library on 9th Avenue. If he waits too long before moisturizing them, his own skin literally breaks out in rashes, the health of his body becoming intertwined with his new home. Every few hours the walls will dry out and begin to crack. In the story “Moist House,” a down-and-out man named Karl is offered a rent-free Bay Area cabin and jumps at the offer, only to learn that the house comes with a big catch.

Kate folk out there