Padraic Maher Cepek is a writer based in the Chicago area. He is the author of Milk Is For Ghosts, They’re Still Writing Me, and The Shape of the Silence.

His work codifies the genre of Millennial Gothic — fiction that explores the horror of systems, digital erasure, and the specific anxiety of a generation raised on collapse. He is drawn to metafiction and magical realism as tools for telling the truth sideways: stories where the form itself is haunted, where reality bends just enough to reveal what realism can’t reach.

When not cataloging modern dread, he is likely perfecting Chicago street tacos or attempting to log off.