Ask the Author: Cara McGuigan

Cara McGuigan is featured in our London Calling issue. She talks with us about the box beneath her floorboard, the dissolution of her heart, and altering EPCOT.

1. What would I find in your watch box beneath the floorboard?

Running away money and a purse with my baby teeth in it.

2. In Russia, do butterflies find you?

I’m not sure. It would be nice. I picked a butterfly up once, you know. They have little furry feet.

3. How does your heart dissolve?

It’s like a chemical reaction: when sadness and ache and love and desire to protect someone combine and makes the blood in your heart all hot and salty, and then it spills over and coats your heart and dissolves all the walls when it runs down the other side. Then the warmth seeps into all the other parts of your body, and you heat from the inside out. (In all honesty, a bit like those blue self-heating bags with the crystals and liquid that you release, that we used to use if someone sprained something badly at gymnastics).

4. What country would you escape to if you had to escape?

Wow. What a question! You know, I had to have a really good think about this. If you were escaping to one place and you didn’t want to go back, and you didn’t want to be found, it’s have to be somewhere populous and outwith the extradition laws. For me personally, to keep me sane, it would also have to be somewhere with good food, and an interesting history and architecture – preferably also somewhere hot with a sea you could swim in. So, I came up with… Yemen! Obviously there are problems (not Muslim, can’t speak Arabic, don’t know anyone, would stick out like sore thumb). But I’d have lots of time to get to grips with it all.

5. How was “Bábochka (Butterfly)” built?

I wanted to do a story with a strong female character, and I like doing stories that twist slightly sexually. My parents were given some pictures for their wedding by a Glasgow Jewish artist called Hannah Frank, and it really started with finding out more about her, and the Glasgow she would grew up in, visiting the Glasgow Jewish Archives, and wandering about the Saltmarket. Gradually, though, I discovered other crazy things about the time frame, the Hunger Marches, and the fact that the population was double then what it is now – where did all those people come from? So I had all these lush, quirky elements just sitting waiting for something to thread them up with. Then I found a picture of a Russian girl, a street photographer in Moscow, and wondered, “If she could do that there, why could she not do it here?” And somehow, it all came tumbling together.

6. How would you change the Soviet Union section of EPCOT?

I don’t know. I would need someone to fund me a research trip to Disney World before I could possibly comment.