The Writer’s Center presents a FREE virtual chat about the craft of fiction! We’re joined by Hayden Casey to discuss his debut story collection, Show Me Where the Hurt Is. Hayden is in conversation with Zach Powers, author and Artistic Director at The Writer’s Center.
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Hayden Casey is a writer and musician currently living in Phoenix, AZ. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Washington and an MFA in Fiction from Arizona State University. His short story collection, Show Me Where the Hurt Is, is forthcoming from Split/Lip Press in spring 2025. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Witness, West Branch, Bridge Eight, Bat City Review, Passengers Journal, Allium, and Yalobusha Review and was longlisted for the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction and the Palette Chapbook Prize for poetry. He teaches writing at Arizona State University, where he was the 2024 recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Instructor Award.
About the Book
A collection of stories about love and grief, anchored in brokenness—broken people, broken relationships, broken systems—and the obsessions and insecurities that prevent us from revealing ourselves to one another. The characters in Hayden Casey’s debut collection Show Me Where the Hurt Is are on quests for betterment, for pleasure, for distraction—and ultimately, for transformation.
One woman takes up work as an “in-betweener,” hired to fill the lonely gap between relationships. A college student devotes himself to hot yoga in the wake of his mother’s unexpected death. When a buzzy new weight-loss pill hits the market, a woman signs up for a trial—and tries to hide it from her partner. An undergrad becomes entangled in her roommate’s feverish relationship with a grad student and watches in horror as the pair begins to sprout each other’s body parts.
Across thirteen stories that brush up against the strange and surreal, Show Me Where the Hurt Is tenderly exposes old wounds that have been carefully concealed so that we might understand the hurt in one another.
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