Works by
Kellie Wells
(Writer)

Fiction

• Skin (2006)
  Turning loose a Midwestern species of magical realism on a small, God-haunted town in Kansas, Kellie Wells charms strangeness and wonder from what might be mistaken for “ordinary” life. Here is Martin LeFavor, convinced his father has been nabbed by a solicitous band of aliens in desperate need of skin; Charlotte McCorkle, a vexed visionary who believes she has helped her husband escape the flesh; Zero Loomis, plagued by sacrificial angels, the memory of his father, and a shadowy sexual identity; his sister Rachel, an amateur masseuse determined to settle accounts with the past, in particular with her lovingly violent father; Ruby Tuesday, Rachel’s daughter, a budding oracle, the embodiment of possibility and prey to history; and, holding this tilted cosmos together, fifteen-year-old Ivy Engel, who carefully measures the borders of Self, advocates for neighborhood bats, and frets about the health of her friend Duncan, his harrowed body mapped and perhaps ravaged by subcutaneous scars.
  
  What happens when the spirit exceeds the limits of the skin? More troubling yet, what happens if it doesn’t? These are the questions the inhabitants of What Cheer, Kansas, must finally face as their paths cross and recross in an ever more intriguing—and perhaps liberating—puzzle.

Short Stories

• Compression Scars (2002) -- Winner Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writer’s Award in Fiction
  The eleven stories in Kellie Wells's debut collection cover a wide range of eccentric characters — from a young girl experiencing her friend's strange demise, to a set of opposite-sex conjoined twins. Forced to deal with the debilitating confines of the physical world--usually manifest in some kind of deformity or affliction, from compression scars to mysterious blue skin — Wells's characters struggle to transcend their existential disappointments and find some way and someone to love.
  
  In the title story, Ivy and her best friend Duncan struggle to understand their mortality as Ivy learns of his potentially fatal internal scarring caused by a moped accident. As Ivy says, "Things can get so strange so fast," and they frequently do in Wells's stories. But Ivy and Duncan help each other escape their frightening, difficult world, if only momentarily, through imagination, good humor, and closeness.
  
  "Godlight" addresses most specifically the questions that are evident in all the stories: do you believe in God, and do you believe in reincarnation? Jonas, the Hyatt Regency Hotel's live-in light bulb replacement man, encounters two different characters--a child who lives in the hotel and a woman who claims her identity has been altered for the Witness Protection Program — who ponder these questions. Meanwhile, Jonas is left wondering what has really become of his missing daughter, Emma.
  
  The physical world is brought into question frequently in this collection, and in "My Guardian, Claire," we see what can happen when someone tries to transcend it — and succeeds. During a séance to reach the narrator's late mother, Claire reaches the spirit world and never truly returns. The narrator tries desperately to retrieve Claire through a hilarious trip to the Exotic Animal Drive-Thru Paradise. Compression Scars is an eloquent and original collection that vibrantly captures the oddities of both the everyday and the out-of-this-world.

Other

• You Have Time for This: Contemporary American Short-Short Stories (2007), Mark Budman and Tom Hazuka, eds.
  See "Infarction"

• Birds in the Hand: Fiction and Poetry About Birds (2004)Dylan Nelson and Kent Nelson, eds.
  See "Transmigration" (originally titled "Sherman and the Swan")