A beautiful thing about childhood is how full of magic it is. Getting out of the house on time for school becomes a quest to slay a monster. A baby blanket wrapped around your shoulders transforms you into a superhero. Somewhere along the way, however, as the daily grind takes over, we tend to lose that sense of everyday magic, even as many of us recreate it for the children in our lives. But in Cameron Walker’s debut story collection, How to Capture Carbon, the magic of ordinary existence is alive and humming all around us.
Writing in a genre Walker refers to as Kitchen Surrealism or the Domestic Fantastic, she takes the reader through the seemingly ordinary challenges of growing up and raising a family of one’s own—from the loss of innocence in “Slow Motion” and unrequited love in “For Lia, Who Wanted to Fly,” to the fears of raising children in a changing climate in “How to Capture Carbon” and the strange loss of a small practicality that many of us take for granted in “Shoeless.”
In shimmering, lyrical prose Walker mines all the beauty, messiness, magic, and sometimes grief of being human in an ever-changing world and body.
I spoke to the author via email.
Jennifer Savran Kelly: What was the genesis of How to Capture Carbon? Did you begin with the idea that you wanted to write a collection? Or did you set out writing individual stories and then at some point realize they were connected thematically and you wanted to bring them together?
Cameron Walker: I wrote individual stories first—and maybe I should say, too, that I went through story-writing phases. Early on I wrote short stories because that’s what I was learning as a new writer and they seemed manageable, at least in length. I was working on a novel during my MFA program, and I was pregnant around the time I graduated. So when I started writing again after my oldest son was born, I worked on stories because I didn’t have much time, and because I felt like there wasn’t much room in my brain for a novel (I still sort of feel like that). And then during the pandemic I had that same feeling—in many ways those first few months felt like being home with a newborn. Anyway, all those stories started to add up, and I started seeing that there were connections between them that I hadn’t noticed before. I have a feeling it might feel stressful for me to do it the other way around—to start out thinking I was going to write a collection.
In the introduction to your Electric Literature Reading List “8 Books About Finding Magic in the Domestic,” you say: “As l grew older, and particularly after I became a parent, magical worlds gave way to the daily grind. With three young kids, this life started feeling even more circumscribed—particularly during the pandemic. No one was coming to tell me that I had unexpected powers, and however much I wished it, I would not be swept away into another dimension where life made more sense. . . . I wanted stories that dabbled in small magic while still tethered to the life I knew—one with dishes piling in the sink and laundry to fold and people to care for and care about.”
Yet the magic in these stories often does not come in the form of a rescue, at least not a straightforward one. More often it exposes a difficult or even disturbing truth, as in the eponymous story “How to Capture Carbon” and “St. Lucia Brings the Light.” How does this kind of magic help the world make more sense to you?
I think the magic allows me to approach something that might otherwise seem scary, or heavy, or overwhelming. I might also be trying to show myself that the magic comes with its own problems—you know, if I had a flying coat, I would still have to worry about whether I could pick up all the kids in the carpool with it. Would it still fly if someone had to bring their science fair project home? What if someone else had a violin, but we had to stop and drop them off at their lesson? Maybe having a minivan really is a better option.
So—and I’m just thinking out loud here—maybe adding the magic shows me that life is still life, and still complicated and full of joys and sorrows. And maybe this also means that real life is more magical than it looks, even without a flying coat? Those sliding van doors that you can open with the touch of a button—I mean, wow!
The author Heidi Reimer says, “Hypnotic, surprising, and seductive, Walker’s stories are grounded in reality until—in an understated leap into the magical—they aren’t.” As I read each of your stories, I had a similar reaction. I felt as if the stories themselves were made of magic. Where does the magic in your writing come from? Do you know what it’s going to be before you begin a piece?
That’s so nice! I’m glad it feels that way. I don’t think I always know what it’s going to be before I start writing something. It’s more that no matter what I start writing, it takes a left turn into something magical. For example, I really was trying to write something serious about the Radium Girls in “St. Lucia Brings the Light.” But I read about the girls getting radium on their clothes and painting their fingernails and their faces with it and when I imagined that, all I could think was how fun and joyful it would feel.
At the time I had been talking to my friend Rachel Fallon—she’s an artist in Dublin—about a project she was doing on the Canary Girls who worked in TNT factories in Ireland and the UK, and how these jobs gave them an independence that they’d never known before. So I couldn’t stay away from the idea of the light as something beautiful and freeing for these girls, too, even though the long-term effects of working with radium were terrible. I almost felt like I wanted to give them something magical to make up for what they would go through later.
As a mother myself, one of my favorite stories in the collection is “Shoeless.” I was haunted by how the simple practical loss of shoes both challenges the mother and exposes her existing challenges, how easily the kids adapt and even thrive and the father accepts it while she suffers. And then it’s she who ultimately finds shoes for them again. Can you talk about what drew you to shoes and feet?
I’m so happy you like that one, it’s one of my favorites, too—and it’s definitely because of how problematic shoes were in our house when my kids were little. None of my kids really liked to wear shoes (and don’t get me started on baby socks). We were always losing shoes, or getting in trouble for not having them at the library, or with older women who would see babies with bare feet and be horrified. And while most of “Shoeless” truly is a product of my imagination, one of my kids did hide our favorite babysitter’s shoe. Luckily, she has a great sense of humor and kept coming back to babysit!
The story itself came out of a prompt during a class I took with Sabrina Orah Mark to write about something essential going missing. I remember being not sure what to write about, and then walking outside one morning and seeing all of our shoes jumbled on the front porch and wishing they would just disappear.
I think feet are also one of those things that I don’t think about until they hurt, and then I can’t stop thinking about how important my feet are when they do hurt. Maybe that ties into the story, too, in terms of thinking (or not thinking) about things when they hurt.
You studied science and writing in college and then science writing in grad school. Have you always had an interest in both science and magic? Or did that evolve through your writing? And does your scientific knowledge play a role in how you think about magic in your fiction?
I’ve had an interest in both for a long time. I was a big sci-fi/fantasy reader as a kid, I played Dungeons & Dragons, I loved this series called Elfquest, which was very attuned to the natural world as well as full of magic. And elves. I also spent a lot of time at our local science museum, and I had a wonderful babysitter who was a chemistry major and would do all sorts of fun experiments with me.
As I got a little older, there was a real tension for me between science and creativity, which is maybe not that different than magic. I once accidentally stapled a bunch of poems on the back of some scientific papers I was copying for my thesis advisor. I truly almost died of embarrassment right there in his office when he showed me. Looking back, I think he was just amused, but I felt like I had lost all of my science cred. Over time, I started to see how science and creativity, particularly writing, were related—complementary, even.
There is—or there used to be, anyway—this idea of “hard science fiction” that scientifically accurate and technically rigorous. I gravitate more toward using science as a starting point for magic, although sometimes I feel badly about this, like I should focus more on how the magic works. I don’t think I’ve knowingly included something that’s not accurate, it’s just that I’m less interested in the nuts and bolts of how, say, an enormous pie would be able to float and more about the metaphorical potential. What I really love about both science and writing are the imaginative leaps that are required to discover something new.
You write in many genres: journalism, essays, poetry, and fiction. What do you think the role of fiction is?
I’m not sure I’m qualified to say anything about the role of fiction on a broad scale, but for me, reading fiction is the way I feel most connected to the world. When I’ve finished a wonderful novel or short story, I feel more compassion for other people and for myself. That can also happen with a wonderful essay, poem, or piece of journalism! But I feel like I absorb fiction most easily. I also feel like I’m writing copy for a supplement: Easy absorption! Gentle on your stomach! Side effects include dreaminess and mild depression as you wonder whether you’ll ever read anything so good again. Does that have a name? Post-reading depression? It happens to me all the time.
Can you tell us a little about your writing process? I heard in another interview that your ideas for short stories come from everyday life and noticing. How do you then approach drafting and revising? Do you ever do research for your fiction?
That is very kind of you to listen to another interview, and I do want to say that I often feel like I am making things up when I talk about writing—although that sounds right, everyday life and noticing. I wish I had a really defined process, it would probably help me get more done! But yes, I wander around through my life, and while I don’t always carry a notebook with me, I do have a journal that I try to write a few lines about the day in the morning and then again at night about what happened that day, or something that I noticed that struck me.
I really like writing by hand, although I often can’t read some of the words later, particularly if I’m writing very early in the morning. At one point I got one of those tablets that is supposed to be able to turn handwriting into typed text, and it was right about half the time. I still have it and would like to figure out how to incorporate it into my writing, but I haven’t yet.
If an idea seems to have energy, I’ll do more freewriting about it, and then when it gets to a certain point—maybe three handwritten pages?—I think, “I should probably start typing this because I’m not going to want to come back and decipher more than this.” So, my process is driven by bad handwriting and laziness!
And then it’s just returning and returning again to those typed pages. And when I say typed, I mean on my laptop. I love the idea of a typewriter but don’t think it would be practical for me. I like to print pages out and edit on them in pen—but then again, there comes a certain point where I think, “I just want to fix this right now!” And then I go back to editing on the laptop. This may be more detail than you wanted! I think one of my strengths is persistence—I will just keep revising until something feels right, no matter how long it takes.
And yes, I love doing research! I can research as a writing-avoidance strategy, so I have to restrain myself sometimes. But it feels so good when I stumble across just a detail that just seems to fit so naturally into a story. For “Shoeless,” I was looking for legends about dogs in Japan, thinking I was going to find something fantastical—my whole family loves Hayao Miyazaki, so I was looking for a Totoro equivalent. I thought I’d write about the white foxes of Mount Inari.
But then I came across the story of Hachiko, a white Akita who waited at the train station every day for his owner—and continued to wait each afternoon for nine years after his owner had died. And that helped me see more of what the story was about—grief, longing, devotion—and I had to go back to the other parts of my story and lift them up so that they were worthy of Hachiko’s story.
Sometimes it seems like some stories are just waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves, or that piece of information or insight that wasn’t available until that moment, which sounds sort of woo-woo (and also frustrating, when you just want to finish something!) but seems to be true for me. And when it happens, it really does feel like magic.
What was the most fulfilling thing about writing the stories in How to Capture Carbon or assembling them for the collection?
There was something really lovely about putting the stories together and seeing that they really were “in conversation” with each other—I know people, including me, throw that around all the time, but it really did feel like new things unfolded when the stories were next to each other. And it was very satisfying to feel like, “Oh, with all of those small steps and snuck-in writing sessions and stops and starts, this did become something.” A book! It is actually a little unbelievable.
But maybe the most fulfilling thing has been to feel like I’m now a part of this world of fiction that has meant so much to me personally. When I think about why I write, a big part of it is to feel like I’m giving something back to the books that have shaped my life, even though I’m not sure how well I’m doing that. I love that this collection is now out there on bookshelves and maybe “in conversation” with all the books out there. That would be a fun story, what the books talk about when the lights go out and the bookstore or library doors locks up for the night.
And I also love that having this book in the world has meant that I have gotten to meet and talk with other writers—like you! I feel like I’m a part of something bigger, something that’s hopeful—a community of people who believe that the stories we tell are important, that seeing the world through someone else’s eyes matters, that we have so much to learn from each other.
Jennifer Savran Kelly (she/they) lives in upstate New York, where they write, bind books, and work as a production editor at Cornell University Press. Jen’s debut novel, Endpapers (Algonquin, 2023) was a finalist for a 2024 Lambda Literary Award and was a fall/winter 2023 Indies Introduce pick. Jen’s short work has been published in Potomac Review, Black Warrior Review, Trampset, Green Mountains Review, and elsewhere.
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