My commissioned illustration to accompany my short story, “A List of Everyone in the World”
A few months ago, I got some wonderful news. A short story I had submitted to Hypertext Magazine, “A List of Everyone in the World”, was accepted for publication in their Fall 2020 issue. The editors also nominated my story for the Best American Short Stories 2020 anthology.
I was so excited by this. I love this story of a misanthropic girl swept off her feet by a person and having to challenge her own fears of opening up in order to give her heart a chance to grow. And as happy as I was that it found a home with Hypertext, I was completely blown away that the editors gave it the anthology nomination.
But another opportunity popped up from this interaction with Hypertext beyond the literary. When I was communicating with the editors on the final copy of the story, I offered to draw something to accompany my story. I figured, why not? I sent the editors my art portfolio. The worst they could say was no.
Christine Maul Rice, the editor-in-chief of Hypertext Magazine got back to me a week later. She asked if I could do more than an illustration for my story; she asked if I could create a new illustrated masthead for their site and draw a custom spot illustration for each piece in their December 2020 issue.
Chris and I worked closely over the last two months on the masthead and she gave me prompts on every piece featured in the magazine with the exception of my own story. I had so much fun working on these pieces and I’m incredibly proud that my story is appearing both online and in print with Hypertext with this art, and I was so excited to create art for the other amazing writers in this issue.
Below is a collection of the images, but I encourage you to go to Hypertext and read all the fantastic stories and essays that these were created to accompany.
