For the final project, I wanted to situate the work “in the wild” so I opted to mimic the format of a literary magazine. The layout contains a short story which is an excerpt from a larger project I have been working on. I adapted a chapter from the rough draft of a novel that is still very much in its infancy. The premise is based on my grandmother’s life and many of the stories are influenced by true events, but the novel itself is a work of fiction. 

 

The protagonist is native to the United States and at a very young age (19) marries one of her close childhood friends, only for him to die of cancer during the first year of their marriage. She is struck by the loss she struggles to grieve her relationship and in an effort to escape her reality and to spite her father, she marries a Turkish man and fleas to Turkey, at age 21. Her life there is full of loneliness, uncertainty, and discovery. The book is centered around her development as an individual working to understand her role in relation to those around her. The intention is to emphasize the importance of human connections and how they work to sustain us. 

 

I made the decision to build a frame around the excerpt that mirrors publications like The New Yorker or New York Magazine in an effort to demonstrate how this piece would exist beyond the scope of its construction in my brain. I worked to incorporate an illustrative component after my previous experiment with visuals. The final product has the ability to stand alone and tell a story independent of its origin piece. The process of creating the publication layout helped establish a more professional element that I wanted to explore. The presentation was really important to me and has the ability to elevate the narrative in a way that helps any reader connect to the experience of the piece itself.

Project no.3

Playing with Publication