Abstract

My project is a heterogeneous collection of short fictions whose concerns, methods, or influences are, variously, metafictional, feminist, generic (in the sense of “genre fiction”), theatrical, and realist. Through five stories I explore the relationships between reader and character, author and character, and reader and author. I am interested in the ways in which the individuals in these relationships affect each other, and in turn, how the stories are affected by these relationships.
Each story in this collection addresses the nebulous quality and logic of storytelling. Some characters in this collection are at the mercy of their own confining narrative structure, as is the case in the fairy tale vignettes in “Cautionary Tales”, while other characters find that they are able to move beyond the limitations that initially restricted them, as we see in “Summer”, a coming of age story about a girl whose passage into adulthood has been hindered by her own tendency to fabricate details about her own life. In other pieces I play with perspective and explore the objectification that can occur through certain skewed points of view, as is the case in “These Foolish Things” and “Dead Letters”. And finally, in “Nomination” I explore the intricate, intimate practice of naming and the author-character relationship it creates between the name giver and the person receiving the name.
Through this collection I aim to encourage the reader to examine his or her own position and complicity in the fates of the protagonists in these stories. By playing with and twisting familiar narrative shapes, established tropes and the expectations of the reader, I hope to explore how the delicate relationships between author, character and reader affect the shape a story takes and the logic it follows.