Terena Elizabeth Bell
Terena Elizabeth Bell is a fiction writer. Her debut short story collection, Tell Me What You See (Whiskey Tit), was a Ms Magazine pick of the month. Other writing has published in more than 100 places including The Atlantic, Playboy, MysteryTribune, Santa Monica Review, and Saturday Evening Post. Short fiction has won grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Terena also works as a book publicist, securing clients coverage with "The Today Show," Good Housekeeping, NPR, BookRiot, and others. Originally from Sinking Fork, Kentucky, she lives in New York City.
X (Formerly Twitter): @TerenaBell
Medium: terenabell.medium.com
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
I don't listen to music when I write — too distracting — but different songs have been instrumental during editing. Take "A Good Leg Is Hard to Find," a short story I wrote that was published in Necessary Fiction, where the words intentionally take the same beat as Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" (4/4 time). To help me keep flow consistent across the whole story, I read it aloud while playing the song. When a sentence got off rhythm, I knew I needed to cut.
What’s the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
If I thought the January 6th attack on the US Capitol was wrong. The title story of my short fiction collection, Tell Me What You See, is the first fiction published about that day, so the question wasn't necessarily off-topic, but the person who asked was in the first audience where I ever read the story and I had just gotten done. Spoiler alert(!!): The story ends with the sentence "This isn't right," so you'd think my opinion would be quite clear.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
To be honest, absolutely not. I wrote my first short story when I was five and fiction is all I've ever wanted to do with my life. Now that said, I am a publicist for a living and there's joy that comes from helping other writers promote their books, especially debut novels — which is the case with a lot of my clients — or titles that have been on the market for a while and still somehow haven't found their full readership.
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I love to draw — specifically charcoal. My grandmother was a painter and she taught me the basics. This inspired the use of images — many of which I drew myself — in Tell Me What You See. If she hadn't introduced me to studio art when I was a child, that part of my brain might never have seen charcoal and collage as a way to express the collection's titular story. I've worked to remain connected to visual art since publication as well, having my book launch for the title at the same hometown art guild where my grandmother used to go for lessons.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
I'm a native English speaker but have a Masters in French and also studied Spanish. From 2005 to 2015, I owned an international translation company, so I can move around in maybe 3-5 other romance and germanic languages as well as know a little ASL. When I was in college, I tried writing bilingually and, in grad school, wrote some fiction in French. There's also a multilingual piece in Tell Me What You See: a visual story/poem called "New York, March 2022" where the same two sentences are translated into 20 languages to show how the pandemic affected all New Yorkers, regardless of background.
