Q&A with Heidi Bell

 

 

 

Heidi Bell is the author of the new story collection Signs of the Imminent Apocalyse and Other Stories. She lives in Aurora, Illinois.

 

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

 

A: Some of these stories I wrote or started writing many years ago, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a graduate student at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. Other stories in the collection are more recent in one way or another.

 

 For example, I began “An Easy Meal” in 2021 and finished it in 2022. But I began “Paradise Is a Place with Plenty of Music” in a writing workshop in 1992, and I completed it 30 years later, in 2012. Similarly, I started “The Sidetrack” many years ago and only finished it within the past five years.

 

I might have an idea for a story and write down some notes, a skeleton idea, or even a complete draft, but then it might take a long time for me to find the right content, the right shape, and the right tone.

 

Short-short stories are often easier for me to finish relatively quickly, and I wrote several of the short-shorts in the collection recently.

 

Q: How was the book’s title—also the title of one of the stories—chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The title story began as an exercise in a class called Form in Fiction. (The story “Peg’s Cat” was also born in this class.) Our assignment was to write several entries in an alphabetical form, which is often used in children’s ABC picture books and reference books.

 

One of our models was Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, a delightfully dark parody of a dictionary. I wondered how I could mimic the children’s book “A is for Apple” format with a subject matter, viewpoint, and tone that would create a striking contrast.

 

What could be farther from the innocent world of a children’s alphabet book than the coming apocalypse? I found the contrast humorous and fun to write. The narrator sees signs of the imminent apocalypse in some surprising places.

 

After writing the first entries of the story to fulfill the requirement for the class, I didn’t finish the story for another five years.

Q: The writer Jaimy Gordon said of the book, “A golden thread of magic, shapeshifting, and light along the edges is at play in these stories, often allowing a glimpse of another world altogether, the richer universe where stories are born.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I’m very flattered by it, and it definitely reflects my intentions as I wrote the stories and gathered them together in this collection.

 

I can’t think of anyone who understands my writing as well as Jaimy Gordon. I admire her and her writing a great deal, and I was lucky enough to be one of her students at Western Michigan.

 

She recognizes, for example, how my stories reflect my fascination with fairy tales, folklore, and the mysterious origin of stories. My theory is that humans have a biological need to tell stories in an attempt to make sense and meaning out of this crazy, magical, terrifying experience we’re all having together.

 

Fairy tales and folklore motifs and themes have the power to illuminate the unconscious elements at play in any story (and in human life), and I refer to them often in the stories in this collection, both directly and indirectly.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the book?

 

A: I sat down with my friends and writing advisors Bonnie Jo Campbell and Andy Mozina, and they offered their wise feedback on the stories, and we hammered out a rough order for the collection.

 

We talked about the different types of stories I’ve included: 10 short-shorts; several stories structured in sections; several more traditional-length short stories; and many stories with overt fairy-tale subject matter or themes.

 

Bonnie’s advice was to create a rhythm with the different types of stories, and I tried to do that. If someone reads the first four stories, they should come away with a good idea of the range of the stories in the collection.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am revising a literary novel, Melancholy Girls, which is set in the Midwest during the 1920s and ’30s.

 

A young woman and her family leave their farm in northwestern Illinois by train, bound for southeastern Wisconsin and their relatives there, but a horrific train wreck sends our girl to the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane, where she is treated by a doctor devoted to popular theories of eugenics.

 

This novel is much more serious than the stories in my collection, but, like Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse, it reflects my interest in marginalized people, social and political structures, and fairy tales and folklore.

 

I’m also working on a couple of nonfiction projects: A series of micro memoirs—nonfiction short-shorts—inspired by Beth Ann Fennelly’s incandescent collection of micro memoirs called Heating & Cooling. Also, a biography called My Father’s Body which is written as a series of related short nonfiction pieces.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Readers can preorder the book, request swag, and find a list of Midwestern events at my website, heidibellbooks.com.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb