Morgan Bell

Morgan Bell is an Australian writer of short stories. Bell is the author of short story collection Sniggerless Boundulations, and Laissez Faire (2017). She is a story contributor to local anthologies and community projects, and in 2014 was short-listed for the Hunter Writers Centre Travel Writing Prize for her anti-travel story Don't Pay the Ferryman. In 2016 Bell edited Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions, a speculative fiction anthology, for Invisible Elephant Press. In 2017 her Short Story Workshop taught creative writing at Tomaree Community Centre and she taught a Writing For Pleasure course at Port Stephens U3A.

Early life and education Morgan Bell was born in Melbourne, Victoria, the eldest of two daughters to Glenys Joy and Stephen Paul Bell. Her mother is from New Zealand, and her father is from England. She grew up in Newcastle, New South Wales, and attended high school in Newcastle.

Career Bell is a member of Hunter Writers Centre in Newcastle, New South Wales, speaking at the 2014 Newcastle Writers' Festival on a panel celebrating the contributions of women to the enrichment of everyday life. Bell read her short story "Midnight Daisy" at the YWCA Newcastle She: True Stories session at the festival. Bell also recorded an audio version of Midnight Daisy for Newcastle's ABC1223 radio station and received a high commendation and prize at the exhibition launch at Lovett Gallery, Newcastle Regional Library.

Bell revealed in an interview that the eponymous Daisy from Midnight Daisy was a 93-year-old British ex-pat who was a close family friend. Bell interviewed Daisy, a process she describes as her proudest achievement, about a month before Daisy undertook a final trip to her birthplace in rural northern England. Daisy died on her UK holiday in October 2013 and was laid to rest at her mother grave. The story contrasts the harsh living conditions of Daisy's mother in Shropshire in the 1920s and 1930s with the worldly experiences of Daisy herself, including World War II, a mixed-race marriage, and relocating to Australia.

The transcript I prepared of Daisy's childhood stories was originally intended to be read at a school assembly of the primary school she attended in the 1930s in England, to give the current students an idea of how much daily life had changed in the last century. It was instead used in the UK funeral service and Australian memorial service. I crafted elements of the six-page transcript into a 500-word short story for a competition celebrating inspirational women. — Morgan Bell, Writers on Wednesdays The collection is experimental in length, form and scope, mostly generated from flash fiction prompts and short story competitions. The collection contains fifteen stories but runs only 68 pages long, as many are vignettes and micro-fictions. The promotional Twitter tagline was Sniggerless Boundulations: the horrors of life in fifteen slices.

The collection is largely about domestic tensions, with a few speculative fiction pieces. The overarching themes are fear, anxiety, time, aging, and jealousy.

About the title, Bell has said it is a nonsense phrase that came to her in a dream but "Linguistically it translates to a calculated series of steps forward. I like the riddle quality and the weightlessness of the phrase." and "Semantically the intention is to evoke a progression of steps away from creeping paranoia."

Bell has made the following statements about the flash fiction collection's likeness to the concept albums of her teen years in the 1990s:

"Read some other single-author collections to see how the stories are arranged. I find a short story collection to be a bit like the old "mixed tape" or the modern iPod playlist, there is an art in the order. If your stories have an evolving theme they can be like a concept album." "I like Strings & Ribbons for its poetry and reprieve. Its placement in the collection is like a lighter musical interlude on a heavy rock album." "I write with so much tension, sometimes it is difficult to sustain over a long time, I often need to construct deliberate ebbs and flows to add some reprieve to all the suspense."

Influences Bell learnt about the free indirect speech method of writing from James Wood's How Fiction Works. She has said that the minimalism and dirty realism of short-stories by Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver have struck a chord with her.

In interviews Bell has cited the following authors as influences: Ursula K. Le Guin, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, spoken by voice artist Jon Severity, was made available on Audible.

Laissez Faire Bell published her second short story collection on 8 September 2017. Bell announced it was three years in the making. The collection contains fifteen stories plus a "bonus track" (poem) and runs only 48 pages long. Feminist writer Ruby Hamad posted an except from the story The Permanence of Ceramics pertaining to May–December marriage, referring to it as "micro-fiction", "ultra short stories", and remarking "It's amazing what creative minds can do with so little words." The promotional tagline is Laissez Faire: Awkward. Weird. Excruciating.

Hunter anthologies Bell contributed a short story to Novascapes, the 2014 Hunter Speculative Fiction Anthology, alongside award-winning authors such as Margo Lanagan, Kirstyn McDermott, and Russell Blackford. Bell's story, The Switch, is based on Germanic folklore. The Anthology was published 30 September 2014 Editor Cassandra Page (C.E. Page) gave an introduction and then readings of excerpts were performed by the following contributing authors: Janeen Webb, Sheree Christoffersen, Danuta Electra Raine, and Samantha Fisher. The line-up represented a cross-section of genres and author experience.

The anthology was mentioned as a prime example of successful Australian speculative fiction crowdfunding collections on Tor.com's introduction post to their new Australian-focussed Aurora Australis - Series blog. Blogger Alexandra Pierce said "Australian press has recently gone in for crowdfunding: like Twelfth Planet Press’ Kaleidoscope anthology, Fablecroft's Cranky Ladies of History, and Novascapes (stories from authors of the Hunter region)."

Bell received an acknowledgement from the editor in the paperback edition regarding promoting the crowdfunding campaign on Twitter and other social media. It stated "I want to thank Morgan Bell for her efforts in creating a last minute social media storm that helped the Pozible campaign reach its goal."

Hunter Anthologies put a call out for submissions for Novascapes Volume 2 between 1 October 2014 and 31 January 2015. Successful entries are to be notified by 28 February 2015. The anthology will be published by Invisible Elephant Press.

Bell has stated on her website that she submitted two stories for consideration: A Deer In The Shunting Yard, and The Lost Art of Transportation. at a 3pm-4pm session on Sunday 3 April 2016 at Newcastle City Hall hosted by editor Cassandra Page (C.E. Page) with a cover illustrator Q&A with Tallulah Cunningham and readings from Jan Dean, Janeen Webb, Magdalena Ball, and Leonie Rogers.

Bell committed to editing Hunter Anthologies' first themed collection, Sproutlings, a 2015 short story project based on wicked plants.

Personal life Bell has been outspoken about her experiences with anxiety and depression, stating that the intention of many of her stories is to replicate the "sense of that horrifying panic or despair" of mental illness. Bell has stated that her story Garsdale is an allegory for struggling with depression. In interviews Bell has characterised herself as neurotic, paranoid, and self-doubting stating that she is prone to exhausting herself with over-thinking. She is also open about her asexuality, and her atheism,

Bell's hobbies include mosaic, digital art, pub trivia, drag queens, and goldfish.