ABOUT THE BOOK
In Katharine Haake’s new eco-fable, What Happened Was, emissaries from the postworld return to us with accounts of a future that spooled itself out because we weren’t paying attention. In it, everything looks a lot like now, only a little bit different. Intimate, precarious, often beguiling, sometimes hilarious, and never free of political context, these reports are haunted by loss. Whether parts of the body or children in trees, things disappear in this world without warning or sense as everything fades toward oblivion and dead parents taunt from the grave: What made you think you were so special it wouldn’t happen to you?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katharine Haake is the author of the eco-dystopian science fiction fable, The Time of Quarantine, and the California hybrid prose lyric, That Water, Those Rocks, and three collections of stories. Her work has appeared broadly and been recognized as distinguished by Best American Fiction and Best American Essays, among others. She is a professor of creative writing at California State University, Northridge.

ABOUT THE INTERLOCUTOR

Lou Mathews is the author of the novels L.A. Breakdown, an L.A. Times Best Book, and Shaky Town , long-listed for 2022 Tournament-of-books, both from Tiger Van Books. He has received a Pushcart Prize, A Katherine Anne Porter Prize and California Arts Commission and NEA Fellowships in Fiction. His new novel Hollywoodski, is due out in January 2025. His short stories have been published in ZYZZYVA, New England Review, Short Story, Black Clock and more than 40- other literary magazines. He has taught in the UCLA Writer’s Program since 1989.