“Broken Thing” by Gail Upchurch appeared in Issue 46 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear a little more about this story.
The original title of this story was “Choice,” which I thought was too on the nose. The pervasive idea in the story is brokenness: the furniture in the apartment Audrey shares with Khalil, their relationship, the undergrad relationship she had with Paul, Paul’s publishing record, Lila’s dream to become a poet, Audrey’s body. The more I revised the story, the clearer the title “Broken Thing” became and the more I began seeing small tears and breaks and fractures in all of the characters’ lives. I pick up these various threads in subsequent stories in my work-in-progress, a short story collection by the same name.
What was the most difficult aspect in completing this story?
The hardest part of writing this short story was making sure I accessed the truth. I wanted to crack Audrey open to reveal her biggest fear, her biggest defeat. She’s achieved an enviable academic career. Audrey appears confident, and in many ways she is, but the undercurrent is quite different. There is a gulf between what she says and what she thinks. At times, the story crosses over into the mommy wars territory, which can come off as trite, so I suppose I also struggled to offer a nuanced take on a fairly divisive idea.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
I would definitely recommend Ravel Leilani’s novel Lester for her very specific use of language and delectable turns of phrase. The story is wild in all the best ways, but what draws me to story I overwhelmingly about Leilani’s dazzling prose and the magic happening at the level of the sentence.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
This is the toughest question! Hopefully, this isn’t a cop out since this was my answer the last time my story was graciously published in Sequestrum, but I’m going to stick with Dana Johnson. I fell in love with her short story collection Break Any Woman Down because of the verisimilitude of Johnson’s writing. The way the words melt away from the page in each story is magical.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m working on a linked short collection of short story collection about the emotional weight of academia on people of color. “Broken Thing” is a story from the work in progress. I’m also hard at work on a young adult novel, a love story that explores women’s reproductive rights in a post-Roe moment.
Our thanks to Gail for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “Broken Thing” here.
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Gail Upchurch is a writer of young adult and adult fiction. She is a 2025 Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a 2022 Kimbilio Fellow, a finalist for the 2022 Pen Parentis Fellowship, and a 2021 Tin House YA Scholar. Besides this, her short story “The Cottage” was nominated for a 2024 O. Henry Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Binghamton University’s program for writers and an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in fiction from Chicago State University. Gail has recent short stories published in The Missouri Review, Obsidian: Journal & Ideas in the African Diaspora, Tupelo Quarterly, Torch Literary Arts, and Sequestrum and is currently at work on a young adult novel and a linked short story collection.