Julia Dillman

Paper Houses

Faculty Advisor: Julie Iromuanya, Assistant Professor in the Program in Creative Writing 

Julia Dillman’s thesis, the short story, ‘Paper Houses,’ is a coming-of-age story that explores the evolving mother-daughter relationship between Ruby, a college sophomore, and her mother, Rachel. Julia's story portrays a moment of critical misrecognition which reshapes the dynamic between a young woman and her mother, using fiction to explore how recognition might simply be, as Lauren Berlant once wrote, "the misrecognition you can bear."