A Conversation with ‘Best Debut Short Stories 2021’ Author Mackenzie McGee

“Speculative fiction at its best is outlandish at first glance, but ends up feeling immediate. That challenge is often what gets me writing—I want to take an absurd premise and see how deep it can go.”

Best Debut Short Stories 2021: The PEN America Dau Prize is the fifth edition of an anthology celebrating outstanding new fiction writers published by literary magazines around the world. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll feature Q&As with the contributors, whose stories were selected for PEN’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and for the anthology by judges Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Beth Piatote. Submissions for the 2022 awards are open now.

Mackenzie McGee is a writer and poet. She is the recipient of a Walton Family Fellowship in fiction and a Lily Peter Fellowship in poetry. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas, where she is at work on her first novel. She lives in the Ozarks with her husband, the poet Landon McGee.

“Re: Frankie” was originally published in Porter House Review. Find a brief excerpt below:

Subject: CONSUMPTION WARNING

Dear Valued Customer,

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Here are some tips for preventing overuse:
– Consume a balanced diet and engage in regular exercise
– Avoid stimuli that may provoke a hysteric episode, such as excessively sentimental books, movies, music, and people
– Utilize less invasive Revitalization Technology, such as the DeepBreathe™ Oxygen Mask or DeepDive™ Bubble Bath
– After the onset of hysteria, wait one day before using your ReJuve, as hysteria may subside on its own
– Confirm that a hysteric episode is genuine by consulting the Quick Hysteria Questionnaire on the side of your ReJuve Unit

We at ReJuve are committed to women’s health and well-being. Should you notice any repair or maintenance issues, please contact myself or another Biowaste Professional with details.

Sean Rasmussen
Biowaste Management

Where did you find the idea for this story?

I’ve been a fan of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for a long time, ever since I read it at an arguably too-young age, so I had been carrying around that fascination for a while. I’m always thinking about power dynamics, especially from a woman’s perspective, and that’s how the idea of a female monster came about. I also was living away from Minnesota, where I grew up, so I wanted to incorporate that landscape into the story too. All of these ideas were pretty abstract until I landed on the epistolary form. Everything sort of clicked when I read George Saunders’ stories “Semplica Girl Diaries” and “Exhortation.” I was awestruck by the way a story’s structure could evoke horror by leaving things off the page. The chilling feeling that something truly terrible is happening just beyond the narrative’s scope felt like the right way to capture the monster’s plight.

How long did it take you to write this story?

It depends on what you consider the start of the writing process. I wrote the first draft of “Re: Frankie” in October of 2017, but I came up with an early concept for the ReJuve systems in January of that year. I’m definitely someone who plans a lot before I start writing. If I don’t know why the world needs this story, who it could speak to, then why am I writing it?

From that point, it was a relatively quick turnaround. I had a final draft by December because that was when MFA applications were due. The story as it appears in the anthology is definitely sharper, thanks to edits from Sam Downs at Porter House Review and Sarah Lyn Rogers and Yuka Igarashi at Catapult.

The epistolary style you use in “Re: Frankie” is incredibly impactful. In a story about blatant disregard for women’s physical and emotional pain, we only get to read Sean’s relentless emails, which receive no response from Julie. How did you settle on this form, and how does it help shape the story?

Part of what drew me to the form was the notion that the person telling the story is not the most figure person in the story. There’s a really productive tension there—Sean definitely isn’t the most interesting person on the page, but he’s completely unable to see things from anyone else’s perspective. This constrained perspective forced me to be more creative about how I gave information, which is how I came up with the automated emails from ReJuve, notifications, and the like.

I did try to write a few emails from Julie’s perspective early on, but ultimately I found the story more powerful when we don’t get to hear from her. Her absence is a gaping hole in the narrative, and a massive indictment of Sean’s character. I hope her “haunting” this story calls more attention to her plight than a few strongly-worded messages from her could.

“Re: Frankie” is a whirlwind of a story that feels futuristic but also, rather uncomfortably, like the present day. It is creepy, funny, and absurd, but not so far off from what feels possible. Sean’s emails, too, swing between being pining, with dashes of adoration and familiarity, to spiteful and angry (“I don’t give a shit if you block my phone number, my personal email, my goddamn good vibes, I’m gonna keep emailing you from Biowaste until you respond”), which so perfectly captures the toxicity of how some men respond to women rejecting their harassment or unwanted advances. How did you juggle these competing moods during the writing process? Did you start out with a specific tone in mind, or did it change over drafts?

Speculative fiction at its best is outlandish at first glance, but ends up feeling immediate. That challenge is often what gets me writing—I want to take an absurd premise and see how deep it can go. To me the world of “Re: Frankie” is a bright and shiny future, but because our same social problems persist, there’s something deeply insidious about it. The idea that we could come so far technologically and still rely on unjust power structures is terrifying, but isn’t that how corporate America does business? You play into people’s insecurities and ugliest beliefs with a TV spot that convinces them your product will change everything. This terrifying sense that what you’re being sold isn’t the panacea it’s meant to be is really what drove the tone in the ReJuve emails. In some ways, writing Sean’s emails was a relief, because at least he’s a real person.

In a way, the employee Sean and the corporation Biowaste Management are both symptoms of the same disease. Both of them want to believe that their actions have positive outcomes, but are uninterested in imagining a different power structure, and so they perpetuate the same hurt over and over again. I think this tone evolved over the course of a few drafts, with the corporate machine and Sean’s hurt feelings informing each other as I wrote them. It was definitely a creative challenge to get into the head of the “nice guy” character, but I think I learned a lot about guys like Sean as a result.

How has the Robert J. Dau Prize affected you?

In a word, it was affirming. I’ve gotten to work with some incredible editors and meet my supportive cohort of 2021 winners. Especially since I’m still in my MFA program, it’s easy to feel like publishing and readers and all of the things that make writing “real” are so far away, but this experience has reminded me that they’re close at hand. I’m so excited to keep growing as a literary citizen!

What are you working on now?

I’m in the middle of two big projects right now, which is a perfect storm of working on one to avoid the other. I’ve almost finished the first draft of a short story collection, and my MFA thesis is a novel-in-progress called Another Castle.

What is the best or worst writing advice you’ve received, and why?

The best writing advice definitely comes from my first creative writing teacher, Arna Hemenway. He would always say you can break any rule, so long as you do it well. I love the way that saying prioritizes the agency and desires of the writer.