Back Story: Maps & Men by Sirenna Blas
“Maps & Men” came into existence after a simple road trip I took with M, an old college friend. All we were doing was traveling from Chicago to mid-Tennessee for a week. Everything was precisely planned with barely any room for negotiation, but the entire time I kept aching for some sort of extraordinary road experience, much like the ones Kerouac used to write about. I hoped to find freedom in my station wagon and in the cheap atlas I bought. But instead, I thought I found it in a new friend M and I had met while spending the day in Louisville. He told us stories about the city, and he said that he would write me. But we all know what Janis Joplin sang….
I drafted this story several times, but nothing sounded right. Like most of my other stories, I was trying to give it too much of a plot, too many circumstances. So I gave it a poetic style and birthed it out of emotions instead. During my trip I was searching for freedom, and I have learned then and through writing “Maps & Men” that abandoning structure can lead to true liberation. Even in stories.
Sirenna Blas’s story “Maps & Men” was published in the winter 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal. Sirenna is the co-host of Northwest Indiana’s Word Circus, an open mic dedicated to bringing literature to a community that often overlooks it. She attended Columbia College Chicago for Fiction Writing before transferring to Purdue University-Calumet where she works as a writing tutor. Sometimes she admits to moonlighting as a fast food employee, but not often. This has been her first publication since her teenage poetry years.
As a Purdue Cal grad myself, I was struck by our having stories published in R & T. I liked your story a great deal. I blog at: http://judithmercadoauthor.blogspotcom/
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Oh, it's wonderful to meet you. I will check out your blog!
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