There Is Only One Ghost in the World follows the fragmented meditations of a multilayered voice, an intimate witness to our times that delicately and bluntly reveals the best and the worst in all of us. It is a kaleidoscopic investigation into the loneliness of modern American life as well as family relationships, exploring the truths and lies that families tell one another, and why, with empathy, sorrow, and humility. We travel from the oil-slicked beaches of California and the alleys of New Orleans to the steps of the Capitol. Here: the raw nerves of gender and identity. Here: the lessons of heartbreak. Here: true myths, fake news, and old rumors. Here: the legacies of art and incisors of seasons. Incompletable Venn diagrams, sibling porn stars, addiction and climate change, shootings and stolen x-rays, the lyrics of disco and the taxonomy of slot machines, steel monoliths and 99-cent stores, last meals and unearthed mummies. There Is Only One Ghost in the World is a book about what happened just before you woke up, and what happened just after. And what happened next.
 

Sophie Klahr is author of Meet Me Here at Dawn and Two Open Doors in a Field.

Corey Zeller is author of Man vs. Sky and You and Other Pieces.

 

 

“A deeply poignant work of both generosity and vision creating an indelible shape and told in lucid, luminous prose. Beautifully done.”
—Carole Maso, author of Mother Child

"Klahr Zeller frame [There is Only One Ghost in the World] in such a way that, even though the narrative follows no obvious trajectory, it captures, by the end, an arc of unabashed hope in the simplest joys."
—Shyanne Hamrick, Heavy Feather Review.— -

“Edgy and gripping, the slides in this carousel are not from last summer’s vacation. They are nerve patterns projected on the screen. Click after click, they give us episodic miniatures of loss and absence, first and last things, the guises of love… Sequencing is essential in a work like this—Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller have the prose equivalent of perfect pitch.”
—Sven Birkerts, author of The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again

". . .The tone is incredibly consistent, providing a wonderfully coherent whole between these two writers, during the pandemic area. . .This is a book I wished I'd written; and I'm terribly jealous."
—Rob McLennan, Critic and author of Notes and Dispatches: essays

"If you asked me the genre of this book, I’m not sure I could give you a concrete answer. It seems unable to be boxed in, despite the blocked prose poetry. These collaborative page-long pieces are semi-autobiographical, magical, dipping into daydreams, worrying about the world, traveling back in time, reflecting and forgetting and rebuilding and growing. Not memoir, not a novel, not a poetry collection. The same body is occupied despite the two writers, who both seem to be channeling something larger than themselves. Like two minds inside of a solo ghost, floating around the globe, one fractured catastrophe at a time."
—Ben Niespodziany, Neonpajamas.— -