Books
In Folks new story collection,Out There, real and fake are virtually indistinguishable.
Kate Folk didnt find success overnight.
She wrote a couple more books, which didnt get published, either.
Months later, Hulu announced it was developingOut Therefor TV.
Now, afterOut Theres long-awaited release in April, Folk is sanguine about her long road to publication.
I’m glad that it’s worked out the way it has, the 37-year-old author says.
Below, Folk speaks to Bustle about online dating, body horror, and adapting her work for television.
The centerpiece of the book is these blot stories.
Could you talk about the blots and how you developed that idea?
Its all from my own experiences.
That was just what I was absorbing, because it is just the way people date nowadays I guess.
So I was just kind of mechanically swiping through.
And then the men on the apps just seemed…
They didnt quite seem real because they werent connected to me by any social ties.
I thought they were probably bots.
And real people will Facetune things or put all these filters on.
So you dont really know what anyone looks like anymore.
The real men on the apps all seemed interchangeable and bland in a way, or flattened.
I was like, I dont know if this is a real person or a bot.
How did you calibrate [Big Sur] so it felt kind of off?
Something about Roger [the blot character] just felt really right to me.
I downloaded some AI chatbot at some point to see what that was like.
I think it was a wellness bot or something.
You could text with this bot and they would give you suggestions for wellness.
[It] would just text back immediately.
And thats really unappealing somehow.
After a few texts, I was just like, Theyre too eager.
I cant handle this energy.
And so I was thinking of Roger being similar.
Did you set out to evoke that, or did it just happen when you were writing?
I think it just kind of happened.
I mean, its so heartbreaking.
Its like the call is coming from inside the house.
Its like the horror of the body betraying you.
Theres a lot of organs and the heart stuff in this.
And I didnt even realize that was happening.
Youre now working on adapting stories from this collection for television.
How has that process been?
Ive actually had a really good experience so far.
I think I got lucky with the people Im teamed with.
My co-writer on it, Sharon Horgan, [is] really experienced and funny.
In the script, its none of that.
It has to move really fast and be really efficient, but also everything has to be visual.
Did you think about that when you were writing?
And at that point, I think the magic would be sucked out of it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
This article was originally published onApril 13, 2022
