For my honors research project I investigated the techniques of established contemporary writers, took a specific look into their different ways of framing a story through the guise of recollected memory, and used their conventions and mechanisms to develop my own original work. I also studied the elements of noir, speculative, and realistic fiction, as I am primarily interested in those genres. In the process I examined my old workshop material, with revision in mind, and selected the pieces with the most potential for improvement. I then developed and polished these into two short works of fiction that I hope to submit to literary magazines for publication. I also planned out and began to work on my first novella. Through personal essay I reflected back on my writing process and what I learned from my research and examined how I might move forward with my work.

A friend once explained to me a French word that does not exist in English. The word is dépaysement, which means, quite literally, to be “uncountried.” To experience dépaysement is to be disoriented in a different country—something that I experienced firsthand while studying abroad in France last semester. It made me call into question both my identity and my nationality, and inspired me to draw upon some of that experience and channel it into a creative piece. My project is a novella titled Dépaysement; it is a fictional work featuring an American protagonist named Jack who is living abroad. Dépaysement explores the eternal question of identity as Jack tries to come to terms with hers: as a woman, as a foreigner, and as a person who is apart from loved ones back home. While my time in France plays a heavy role thematically in my novella, the narrative is purely imagined. Dépaysement is thus a reconciliation of memory and fiction, seeking above all to resonate with the reader and perhaps even lead them to consider their own place in the world.

Jorge Luis Borges once wrote that “A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader ... A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.”