In Are You There, Indiana poet Samantha Fain refracts contemporary melancholia into iridescent lyricism. Fain delights in breaking rules, the serendipity of autocorrect incantations, testing how far, in space and time, a connection will travel, and where it ends—quoting sources including Schrödinger, Ask Jeeves and Kim Kardashian. In Fain's haunting poetics, grief, mania, pop culture, faith, quantum physics and digital relationships collide, alive with the spiky humour of brutal self-awareness, aglow with startling new language.

"These poems are like Neosporin; they sting and they heal." Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Creator of Bojack Horseman.


"The most lyrically provoking debut I've ever read. Samantha Fain articulates the complex contemporary manifestations of grief and desire, while still giving us possibility instead of foreclosure." C.T. Salazar, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking

Samantha (Sam) Fain is a poet from Indiana. Her chapbook Coughing Up Planets debuted with VA Press in March of 2021. Her microchapbook, sad horse music, debuted with The Daily Drunk in May of 2021. Catalina Ponce of Cicada Editora translated this work, and Música de Caballo Triste was published in 2024. Sam is the co-editor of Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology, out with Olney Magazine in 2022. Are You There is her debut full-length collection. Find her at samanthafain.com.