“Community of Caring” by Casey Bell appeared in Issue 33 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
I wrote this story trapped indoors for several days because of hazardous wildfire smoke engulfing the west coast. It came out of my own mounting anxiety over the climate crisis, the pandemic, and rising threats to democracy. Each element is terrifying on its own, and when they’re combined like that in a claustrophobic little snow globe, they kind of spill into the surreal and the fantastical elements seem less distorted and implausible. I think this story is trying to grasp what this feeling of not being able to wake up from a bad dream does to our capacity to nurture and be nurtured, or to see and be seen, as individuals and as a community. And I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this, but the idea for the radio prayers came from a Rolling Stones song.
What was the most difficult part in writing this piece?
There are some really personal parts of this story that were painful to write. My mom, who is extremely smart and kind and compassionate, is one of the many people sucked/abducted into the Covid misinformation world, and it has severely damaged our relationship. The protagonist’s mom in this story is a dialed-up, nightmare version of my mom. I think part of her would be hurt if she ever read this piece, so that’s difficult and fraught and weird.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Only one?! Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Joy Williams. More than any other writer, her work has consistently shaped my aesthetics and inspired me to get weird and dark and dreamscapy on the page. I like to picture us both wearing sunglasses, drinking martinis in the desert.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
My short story collection, Little Fury, is coming out with Metatron Press (a female owned and operated indie based in Montreal) this May and I’m looking forward to organizing some readings and a launch party. And I’m also in the early, scary stages of trying to write a novel. I’m such a short story writer, so I’m hoping to discover a scheme where I disguise linked stories as a novel. That’s a thing, right?
Our thanks to Casey for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “Community of Caring” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-community-of-caring.
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Casey Bell has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno. Her debut short story collection, Little Fury, is forthcoming from Metatron Press in 2023. Casey’s fiction appears in Cream City Review, New South, The Boiler, Reed Magazine, The New Limestone Review, and Timber. She was shortlisted for the Iowa Review Fiction Award and was a finalist for the American Short Fiction Halifax Ranch Prize, the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize and the Calvino Prize. Casey is the co-director of Girls Rock Reno, a music camp for self-identified girls, trans and gender-expansive youth. She’s also the proud mother of a pug-mix named Maud.