Christine Bell
“She’s one of those writers like Flannery O’Connor or Isak Dinesen: she doesn’t so much write stories as spin tales, the way the Brothers Grimm spun tales.”
Bell on writing:
“Every story starts with a haunting – a phrase overheard in a conversation, an image out of context that stops and waits and then returns and will not go away. Some still haunt after the story is written:
For the short story “Mercy”: two elderly women in Brooklyn. One says: “Was it worth it? Was he a good lover?” The other answers, “He was a kind man.”
For the novel Saint: One empty space at a full dinner table. An old yellow dog walks by the open window. A stranger turns to me and complains about the heat.
The novel Perez Family: The back of a man and woman walking from a café cubano stand in Miami. She is exuberant in a swirly navy and white polka dot dress. He seems confused about their direction and his shoes, they aren’t his.
For several stories before landing in the novel Grievance: An early morning parking lot outside a hospital. Cold and misty. A crow pecks at a red Doritos bag. A well-heeled woman in a wrap coat hurries by, stops, walks to the crow who flies off. Then she bends chatting quietly to the shiny bag before catching herself and walking away.”
Christine Bell is originally from Yonkers, NY and graduated from Mercy College with a degree in English Literature, Magna Cum Laude. She has lived and worked in Miami and Nashville and currently lives in the Central California Coast with her family.
