‘No time to mourn’1: Female characters and their preapocalyptic activities in the postapocalyptic short story

Marco Caracciolo says ‘postapocalyptic fiction implies and foregrounds a catastrophic rupture between a preapocalyptic and a postapocalyptic state of the storyworld’. This article shows, however, how female characters in postapocalyptic landscapes resist such a rupturing, often by continuing with preapocalyptic activities in a bid to find stability and hope in a ruined or deeply changed world. This critical–creative paper will explore how female characters use preapocalyptic activities, such as list-making or sculpture, to navigate dying or troubled landscapes. The critical element of the article will consider the idea of list-making in Carmen Maria Machado’s short story ‘Inventory’, while the creative element – a postapocalyptic short story called ‘Maybe the Birds’ and which is partially a creative response to Machado – will tell the story of a female potter who decides to make ceramic bird syrinxes, or voice boxes, in a bid to try and keep birdsong alive after most life on Earth ends. In what may be a final act of artistic activism, she hangs these in the trees so her dog can hear them when the wind blows, her legacy being to ‘leave him the birds’ after she has gone.