About
Kathleen Schaefer’s short stories can be found in PodCastle, Solarpunk Magazine, Tales & Feathers, Apex Publication’s anthology Robotic Ambitions, and more. She lives in Seattle where she works as a software engineer. When not writing, she enjoys board games, baking, and spending quality time with her cat.
Short Stories
For my summer hobby this year, I sprawl across my couch, listening to my upstairs neighbours bicker while their literal demon dog sets fire to their furniture.
“Everything I Overhear When My Neighbours Argue About Their Hellhound Puppy”
Tales & Feathers Volume 3, February 2025
On the tallest peak outside our colony, a radio telescope repeats, in 37 languages, a single message: “Bring us home.”
“What Grows on an Unforsaken Moon”
Infinite Worlds Issue 14, November 2024
My mother hands me the last marigold in existence. She’s potted it into an old mug, one with a logo of an electro rock band I saw live on the east coast as a teenager, before my music tastes mellowed and before we drew borderlines like spider legs across the continent.
“We Make the World in Our Image”
Solarpunk Magazine Issue 17, September 2024
Until he died and subsequently wiped all traces of himself from digital existence, I had no interest in my neighbor’s history beyond the nostalgias of high school baseball and college parties that we swapped over sodas. Now I spent hours trying to search for his name on the internet, hoping the AI trawlers had missed some crucial bit of data in their purge. There was nothing.
James Gunn’s Ad Astra Issue #15, April 2025
The hotel is made of a hundred thousand living bones. That is an estimate. The exact number fluctuates as new cartilage fuses together and old skeletons wear to dust.
“The Ossification of The Space Between Us”
Gamut Magazine Issue 2, February 2024
Today I pull the knife out of my arm and crush the handle until it twists into the contours of my fingers, just so he remembers I can bleed him with the edge of my pinky. Then I spear one of the shrimp sizzling in a layer of olive oil and offer it to him on the tip of the blade, an inch from his face.
Robotic Ambitions, November 2023