Q&A with Sue Mell

 

Photo by John Bessler

 

Sue Mell is the author of the new story collection A New Day. Her other books include the novel Provenance. She lives in Queens, New York.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?

 

A: Took me 12 years, with a number of wide gaps, to write the 13 stories in A New Day.

 

Five were in Narrative Magazine between 2010 and 2012. Then I stalled out. I got into the MFA program at Warren Wilson, where I worked on two more early drafts, and wound up starting a novel called Provenance. The novel centers on a character from those first stories, leading his life 30 years later. The other six stories were written between 2020 and 2022.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Ah—the title. It’s quite significant to me, and to the book as a whole.

 

In the summer of 2020, I’d just spent my fellowship year with BookEnds completely rewriting the version of Provenance I’d finally finished long after grad school.

 

After being immersed in the novel for so long—those people, that time and place—I was at a total loss for what to write next. And because I had great trepidation about starting wholly from scratch, I once again returned to the primary characters from my early stories, imagining where they might’ve ended up later in life.

 

I also wrote into some of the secondary characters, giving them a more fully fledged life, and creating a linked collection.

 

A New Day was originally just a working title, a little joke with myself about starting over as a writer and beginning something new. My plan was to give that “problem” to the main characters of the newer pieces too.

 

But then I saw that attempts to start over—or resurrect the past—ran through the stories like a common thread, so the title stuck.

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, “Endlessly fascinating characters propel these wonderfully ardent stories.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love that description, because I feel like characterization is the greatest strength of my work. And as I’m always hoping to move the reader, “ardent” is a very satisfying word.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the collection?

 

A: All these stories are essentially about romantic relationships and artistic ambitions that—like everything else in life!—don’t necessarily work out in the way the characters planned.

 

In the story “Emma Redux,” Emma muses over her youthful notion that “there always was, and would always be, a new day,” and comes to the conclusion that there “would never be another day—not like the ones that had passed her by.”

 

But as we follow these characters and their reflections over time, we see their growth and determination, and my wish is that the reader will close the book with their own satisfying if hard-won—and perhaps bittersweet—feelings of hope and possibility.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Mostly nonfiction. Very short essays—vignettes, really—from my daily life. With my mom having just turned 95, I’m at a place of limbo as a caregiver, with the inevitable looming closer and closer as time goes on.

 

So I’m using those essays as a way to mark and explore this juncture in my personal life—and to figure out what’s next for me as a writer. I don’t see myself writing a full-on memoir, but I do have the idea of a chapbook in mind.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’ve got a Substack called So Much Stuff, which has been a great place to try out some of that very personal work and see how it lands. You’ll also find some flash fiction there, along with short excerpts from contemporary novels and story collections you’ll want to add to your TBR pile, and snippets of association to songs running the gamut of genre and era.

 

The posts are all very short, meant to provide a moment of something meaningful or simply enjoyable in our otherwise often hectic lives.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb