Andrew Dana Hudson launches "Absence," in conversation with Jinwoo Chong

Andrew will be joined by writer Jinwoo Chong for a reading, conversation and Q&A, followed by a reception and signing.

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People are “popping.” Disappearing, one by one, into thin air. A global cataclysm known as Spontaneous Human Absence. In a world where prospects for survival are increasingly grim, hopelessness prevails, political rifts widen, and doomsday predictions flourish.

Harvey Ellis works the night shift for the Bureau of Depopulation Affairs, an ad hoc federal agency meant to contain and catalog the crisis. Harvey’s job: to investigate claims of Absence, and, if validated, issue a standard government stipend to boost morale. Still recovering from losses of his own, Harvey is content in his routine—until his life is shaken by an unexpected assignment from the central office.

A woman long thought Absent has reappeared in her hometown of Dawnville, Kansas, claiming she’s been to the other side and back. But is her wild and irresistible account true, or is she just the latest false prophet, offering hope to a world desperate for it? Together with his no-BS partner, Shonda Erins, Harvey travels to Dawnville to find out.

A resonant portrait of a world beset by confusion and dismay, Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut is a vividly imagined novel of cosmic proportions, examining life in a time of exception and the stories we tell to get by.

Advanced Praise for Absence

“Hudson (Our Shared Storm) gives a skillful metaphysical twist to a tale of apocalyptic horror in this strikingly original novel. Its setting is a near-future America devastated by “popping” . . . The thoroughness with which Hudson imagines how individuals and society would have to rewire themselves to contend with this bizarre phenomenon lends his tale impressive philosophical heft.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“A haunted story about unfinished lives, the persistence of hope, and the consequences of grief without end.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Unsettling . . . A measured meditation on belief and institutional strains.” —Foreword Reviews

“Andrew Dana Hudson’s debut novel succeeds on every level—an original and compelling mystery, told with assurance, intelligence, craft, and all of it fueled by an extraordinary imagination.” —Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“A wild, inventive, and extraordinarily prescient novel, Andrew Dana Hudson’s Absence unspools a moody detective yarn that quickly vaults sky-high, weighing humankind’s slow numbing against daily horrors and faith’s struggle against the impossible. And yet most impressively, within its nightmare of spontaneous gradual depopulation, much is made clear of our species’ capacity for hope. There simply aren’t enough books like it.” —Jinwoo Chong, author of I Leave It Up to You and Flux

Andrew Dana Hudson is a speculative fiction writer, sustainability researcher, teacher, and critical futurist. He is the author of Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures and dozens of short stories and essays appearing in venues like Slate, Lightspeed Magazine, Long Now Ideas, and Jacobin—as well as his newsletter, www.solarshades.club. He lives in Arizona, where he teaches writing, futures thinking, and yoga.

Jinwoo Chong is the author of the novels and , a Editor’s Choice, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and named a best book of the year by Apple Books, Amazon Books, Esquire, HuffPost, GQ, Cosmopolitan, and Goodreads. His work has appeared in Guernica, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature, and received recognition from the 2025 Best American Short Stories anthology, a special mention from the 2022 Pushcart Prizes, and others. His third novel is forthcoming in March 2027, from Ballantine. He lives in New Jersey with his husband and cat.

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