Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Sue Mell writes about A New Day, her new story collection out now from She Writes Press.
If A New Day were a conversation, it would take an unexpected turn.
If A New Day were a mistake, it would be one of many you’d always regret.
If A New Day were a song, it would pull at your heart in the best and worst way.
If A New Day were a concert, the crowd would spill out into the street afterward, no one wanting to go home.
If A New Day were a beverage order, it would be “coffee light no sugar” to go with a buttered roll from an East Side street cart.
If A New Day were a choice, it would be between desire and fidelity—or maybe just convenience.
If A New Day were a split, it would be between the jobs creatives do to make a living and their own personal work.
If A New Day were the past, it would be complicated, and there’d likely be drugs involved.
If A New Day were the future, you would be resigned to what you have while secretly hoping for something more.
Sue Mell’s story collection, A New Day, was a finalist for the 2021 St. Lawrence Book Award and is out now from She Writes Press. Her debut novel, Provenance, won the Madville Publishing Blue Moon Novel Award, and was selected as a Great Group Read by the Women’s National Book Association and as an Indie Fiction Pick by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. Her collection of short essays, Giving Care, won the Chestnut Review Prose Chapbook Prize. She earned her MFA from Warren Wilson, was a BookEnds fellow at SUNY Stony Brook, and lives in Queens. Learn more at www.suemell.com and follow her on X at @suemell2017.
