S. Kirk Walsh: The Blitz of Grief

In the spring of 1941, four German bombing attacks devastated the densely-populated city of Belfast. Government officials, who feared that a hit to the city’s zoo might lead to the accidental release of dangerous animals, ordered a number of animals to be killed. But a baby elephant named Sheila was spared, taken home, and sheltered by one of the zoo’s first female zookeepers.

The novelist S. Kirk Walsh (whose first name is also Sheila) took inspiration from this story The Elephant of Belfast, which vividly captures a young woman’s emotional experience of historical trauma and the growth of a deep bond between zookeeper and elephant. In writing about wartime Belfast, Walsh reflected on her own experience living in Manhattan during September 11. For her, the collective public mourning that followed both traumatic events contrasts with the private grief many of us have endured during the pandemic.

—Karen Olsson for Guernica

You recently wrote an essay for about two events in your twenties—studying under E.L. Doctorow at NYU and injuring your arm so that you were temporarily unable to write—and how their confluence taught you to listen to books, to hear the music in the prose. “Read deeply, steal what you can and always listen for the music,” Doctorow told you. I wonder how your new novel reflects those instructions. What books