Distance is a collection of short fiction that explores the spaces between us. Sometimes it‟s emotional, sometimes it‟s physical; it lies before us like a cross-country journey, dragging us through emotional terrain fraught with countless dangers and rare rewards. A convict returns to his childhood home. A lonely man documents the unexpected damage of an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A teenager learns that some boots are not made for walking. These stories are the long and short of it. They examine the way we struggle to understand love, lust, disappointment and the kind of detachment that can develop where we least expect it. We all know the distance between two people differs by degree, but in the end, where that space exists, an inescapable question awaits: Should we sever the tie or bridge the gap?

Some of the main literary influences of my thesis include the works of Barry Hannah, Richard Ford, Flannery O?Connor, and Walker Percy. Barry Hannah, who not only focuses on the past but also manages to merge it with the present, influenced the way external factors shape my stories. Ford, on the other hand, who focuses on relationships and the private lives of couples, influenced the way I approach the internal aspects of my stories, while O?Connor influenced the inclusion of mass culture aspects such as advertising. Percy, though, influenced the way I structured the majority of my stories. Some of the main themes that emerge in my thesis include displacement, loss, and identity. Because my main literary influences do contain such different writing styles, I do not draw from their style as much as Hannah and Ford?s postmodern sensibilities and Percy?s structural approach.

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