As a professional writing major at my college, seniors have to compile their best work from over the last four years into a bound, designed book. It’s been a project I’ve been waiting for with bated breath ever since I learned about it.

Older students told me as a sophomore to save every paper I ever wrote, keep teachers’ notes, and to be thinking about a theme that can tie everything together. Back then, I couldn’t imagine picking out a theme that could encompass all my writing: after all, I liked to write about different things, and some of my stories were vastly different from others.

But as my senior year came upon me, I found the perfect theme. My stories revolve around either hope or memory. Many of them look to the future with either a warning to society about our faults, or an expected adventure just out of reach. And when not writing a social commentary on America’s morals, I’m pulling nostalgia from the cracks of my mind.

I thought “memory” and “hope” were much too generic for my theme, but finally it hit me: I also write about time. Time looking forward to the future or back to the past. “Hope” and “Memory” go hand in hand with time.

The final book was named Timelines, and you can purchase a copy here for $6.97!

Over Christmas break, I got the jump on designing my cover. This is what I came up with:

I based the cover off of my favorite story that I felt captured the essence of the theme the best. Set in the future where society has lost much of its technological knowledge, “Joy of Checkers” is a short story dystopian that presses the importance of remembering our history to better equip us for the future.

Here are some examples of the interior design. Each divider page represents a time period with a path moving forward, progressing through time: railroad, street, and bridge, and each picture is directly associated with my favorite story from that section.

My roommate, Crystal Partridge, did the illustrations for one of my stories, and I was able to illustrate another one myself.