Dead Hearts - history and fiction

Abstract

The following is a Fictional Work submitted as a thesis in the spring of 2023. It centers on the fictionalized life and disappearance of Adrienne Hardy, a transgender teenager living in the mid-90s, as well as the decades-later (also fictionalized) investigation into the case by Casey Britton, herself a trans woman in the mid-to-late 2010s. The project was born from a number of goals, most notably to center trans women in a story with more than a few roots in the horror genre, in a way that doesn’t other transness/lean into transphobia as much of the genre has/does. Additionally, much of the project centers on Adrienne’s internet presence in early trans communities, all of those details are drawn from real queer resources and archives from/of the early internet; they strive to be as genuine to real trans history as is possible without being there first hand, in the hope, in part, of illuminating constantcy in the trans experience, one widely thought to have originated in the rather recent past. The thesis encompasses the novel’s first 10 chapters/41 pages, with subsequent installments still in progress. The author can be reached at imahood5@gmail.com with questions/comments/concerns/queries/etc. about the writing that already exists and/or is still to come. Keywords: English/English major; Creative-Writing/Creative Writing Concentration; Fiction; Student Work; Transgender History; Queer History; LGBTQ; Internet History; Horror and Suspense; Folktale and Rumor; Investigative Fiction; True-Crime