“Where’s The Baby,” a short story by Susan Robison, appeared in Issue 22 and can be read here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
I have been working on this story for at least five years. My initial thought was that it would be a work of magical realism and there actually would be a baby. Then I became more interested in what was going on with the protagonist and I wondered what it would feel like to have a far-flung sister come back and demand so much of her near the end of life. How would she cope with that intrusion given the fact that her life has not been easy? For a long time, the story ended on a depressing note, but then I realized she might have some redemption and a tiny bit of insight at the end. This is one of those cases where I needed years and years to figure out why I was writing the story. I’m glad that’s not always the case!
What was the most difficult part of this story?
The hard part was trying to figure out why I was writing it. In the end, I realized that I was trying to figure out how people handle challenging relationships with grace, even if they continue to feel frosty on the inside.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Scouting for the Reaper by Jacob M. Appel, A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Alice Munro. She is one of the greatest living short story writers in my opinion.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m working on a novel-in-stories. My first book was a novel-in-stories called Garden for the Blind, which follows two kids in the Detroit suburbs for thirty years after they get a scholarship student kicked out of their tony private school. I really enjoyed the structure because it allowed me to explore the two protagonists from different perspectives and delve deeper into their motivations and also their delusions about themselves. Where’s the Baby? is part of a collection of stories called, I Have the Answer, which will be published by Wayne State University Press in 2020. https://www.wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/i-have-answer
Our thanks to Kelly for taking the time to answer a few questions and share her work. Read Kelly’s story, “Where’s The Baby,” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-wheres-the-baby.
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Kelly Fordon’s work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Kenyon Review (KRO), Rattle, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and various other journals. She is the author of three award-winning poetry chapbooks. Her novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, was chosen as a Michigan Notable Book, a 2016 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Finalist, a Midwest Book Award Finalist, an Eric Hoffer Finalist, and an IPPY Awards Bronze Medalist in the short story category. Her first full-length poetry collection, Goodbye Toothless House, was published by Kattywompus Press in 2019 and her second short story collection I Have the Answer will be published by WSUP in 2020. www.kellyfordon.com.