Erase and Rewind by Meghan Bell

An assault survivor realizes she can rewind time and relives the experience in order to erase it. A teen athlete wonders why she isn’t more afraid of death when the plane carrying her team catches fire. The daughter of a superhero ruminates on how her father neglected his children to pursue his heroics. Two shut-in depressives form a bond on Twitter while a deadly virus wipes out most of the population of North America.

The stories in Erase and Rewind probe the complexities of living as a woman in a skewed society. Told from the perspective of various female protagonists, they pick at rape culture, sexism in the workplace, uneven romantic and platonic relationships, and the impact of trauma under late-stage capitalism. Quirky, intelligent and darkly comic, Meghan Bell’s debut collection is a highwire balance of levity and gravity, finding the extraordinary in common experiences.

Praise for Erase and Rewind:

“A tough compelling new voice that tells us what it’s like to be young nowadays. Meghan Bell is a writer to watch.” —Susan Swan, author of The Dead Celebrities Club

“Utterly bold, darkly funny, candid and bizarrely tender, Meghan Bell’s debut is a testament to being young and female, lost, lonely, and neurotic, while simultaneously trying to navigate the perilous journey of everyday life. The female narrators stumble frequently and learn tough and heartbreaking lessons about the people they love or those who claim to love them. Bell’s surreal stories will captivate with their gritty and melancholic insight. Erase and Rewind is a compulsive coming-of-age short story collection from a talented writer.” —Lindsay Wong, author of The Woo-Woo

Press Coverage:

Most Anticipated: Our 2021 Spring Fiction Preview —49th Shelf

2021 Spring Preview: Fiction —Quill and Quire

“[R]ivetting, shake-you-by-the-shoulders short stories… I found this book difficult to put down, almost as if it were rude to leave the cinema before all the shorts ended. In a matter of hours, I discovered 13 works that could easily play on screen.” —Mala Rai, The Miramichi Review

Read an Excerpt from Meghan Bell’s Short Stories, Erase and Rewind, An Insightful, Darkly Funny Debut Collection —Open Book

“Erase and Rewind is a bold and nuanced collection of stories, where women lose and find themselves through depression, desire, and friendship, only to become more wholly themselves, on their own terms—a distinctive, feminist book.” —Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Humber Literary Review

Strange Tragedies for a Modern World: A review of Erase and Rewind —Theo McQuiggan, White Wall Review

“Bell finds balance where it is difficult to do so, making the collection one that becomes difficult to put down, and effortless to complete in one day.” —Zoe McKenna, The Ormsby Review

“Erase and Rewind is an impressive debut and should not be missed.” —Kelly Baron, Canadian Literature

“Bell’s stories sit right in your core, somewhere high in the abdomen, like you’ve swallowed a too-big lump of something delicious—warm, nutritive, and painful. Erase and Rewind taps into the urgency of the mundane as much as it normalizes the abnormal, and whether you’re reading about an assault survivor, a pregnant teenager, or a superhero’s daughter, this is 2020s catharsis at its finest.” —Nicole Chatelain, The Fiddlehead

Meghan Bell is a writer and visual artist based in Vancouver. Her work has appeared in The Walrus, The Tyee, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Grain, Rattle, CV2, and The Minola Review, among others. She joined the editorial board of Room Magazine in 2011, and was the magazine’s publisher from 2015-2019. During this time, she co-founded the Growing Room Literary Festival and acted as the lead editor and project manager of the magazine’s fortieth anthology, Making Room: Forty Years of Room Magazine (Caitlin Press, 2017). Erase and Rewind is her debut story collection. You can find her online at meghanbell.com.