Author Q&A with Cat Casey

Cat Casey is an MFA candidate in Fiction at the University of New Hampshire. She currently serves as the Arts editor for Barnstorm Literary Journal, and as the co-host of the Read Free or Die live reading series. Her work has been published previously in the Long River Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m Cat. I’m a Cancer/Leo cusp, which means I’m about to be twenty-four soon, with a Pisces moon and a Capricorn rising. I grew up in Southeastern Massachusetts in a working-class, single mother household, whereas for the majority of my life my father has lived in Northern Ireland. I’ve spent most of my life between those two places. This dual identity influences most of my work, even when I don’t mean for it to.

How has your strategy of using one, long sentence in “smoke break” helped to paint a vivid picture of your narrator? Have you used this strategy before?

“smoke break” was actually the result of a writing exercise inspired by “Sweet Sixteen” by Gary D. Wilson, in which he utilizes the same strategy to tell a much different story. I really wanted to use the structure of the piece in a way that connected to the mindset of the narrator, and at the time I was at a restaurant job where I was constantly running around (and up and down a huge flight of stairs that lead to the kitchen) so it felt like a natural direction to go in for a frantic sort of stream of consciousness. This was the first time I had tried something like this, but I did eventually end up using it as a writing assignment for the creative writing class I taught at the University of New Hampshire this past Spring.

What do you hope your reader takes away from ‘smoke break?’

Not to ask your waitress for free favors! But in actuality, I often felt like I had to lose my sense of humanity in order to continue working in customer service, especially food service. It might sound like an obvious sentiment but if there’s one thing I can get across with ‘smoke break,’ it’s to treat service workers with some grace – and perhaps to highlight the complex inner worlds experienced by all people, even those that are paid to serve you. Sometimes our lives may seem small but that’s not really up to anyone else to decide.

How do you relate to your narrator? How are you different?

I always liked to preface public readings of ‘smoke break’ with the pre-warning that it’s fictive; I would never romance a line cook. (This is, however, a lie, because I have often found there is innate eroticism in the forced proximity of working together, but this is perhaps because I come from a very small town).

Despite that, the narrator is so close to me that this could honestly be considered some form of autofiction. I’ve been working in customer service since I was freshly sixteen, and I’ve been waiting tables/bartending for about three years now. Like the narrator, it often feels like I’m forced to think in one long interrupted sentence. She’s also so concerned about how the men around her are consuming her body, which definitely rings true for at least past versions of me. Like her, I find it hard to quit bad habits. Unlike her, I don’t think I’d let someone be so mean to me; but that’s a lesson she’ll learn eventually.

How has serving as the Arts Editor of Barnstorm Literary Journal affected your own creativity?

I’m a very visual person. When I’m stuck on a piece or I’m feeling a lack of ideas, I often draw people until one of them seems interesting enough to follow up with for some sort of character building or study. Arts editing felt like a much more professional version of that, in which I was constantly thinking about elements of storytelling and how they aligned visually with the library of submissions I had to work with. Additionally, it’s just interesting to see publishing from the other side and to see how much consideration goes into the selection process for submissions.

How has being the co-host of the Read Free or Die live reading series inspired you?

I loved hosting Read Free or Die. It was not only a very fulfilling experience by getting the chance to platform other writers and promote the sharing of their work, it was also just really fun. I worked for years in comedy event planning when I was in college, in which I was in charge of planning and booking events related to comedy and comedians, but this was the first time I was working on events related to something I have a vested professional and personal interest in. It definitely made me think of ways to better convey my ideas in written work that was specifically written for performance. Hosting the live reading series made me reconsider a lot of my earlier pieces and the forms in which I originally tried to write them – a lot of short stories might be performance pieces and monologues in disguise if you look hard enough!

How do you fill your creativity cup?

I like to go for long walks with a podcast or an audiobook, and even though I write fiction it’s usually creative nonfiction that I tend to listen to. I love to crochet, and I find that having my hands busy lets my mind wander more easily when it comes to writer’s block or thinking of new ideas – the same goes for drawing. Otherwise, I honestly dedicate a lot of my free time not working or writing to watching movies. I minored in film in college, and spent all of high school working at a local movie theater, so it’s always been a fairly generative experience for me to watch visual storytelling compared to the written kind.

How has your time in the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire helped you grow as a writer and as an individual?

It’s easier to think of how it hasn’t helped me grow. I’ve had such an incredible experience at the UNH MFA; I shudder to think of the work I submitted in my original portfolio with my application. I feel like I’m a completely different writer than when I started, thanks in part to the faculty and my friends and peers who I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Everyone always talks about the time portion of the MFA, how it forces you to really dedicate a lot of your time and mental capacity towards writing, but there’s also so many resources I didn’t know about that I only learned of thanks to the people in my program. 

On a personal level, I have met so many wonderful friends in my MFA, and outside of it in the New Hampshire seacoast area. They have encouraged me to grow and write better just by enriching my life the way that they do. 

What do you think of when you hear, “The Good Life?”

A life with people I love, who love me. A body that’s just a body, and a compassion for the self that outweighs anything else.

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Casey’s flash fiction, “smoke break,” is featured in Issue #15.

Thank you, Cat, for being open to doing this Q&A with us and for allowing us to publish your kick-ass flash story! Best of luck as you finish your MFA!