Date
8-29-2025
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)
Chair
Sandra Smith
Keywords
fiction, autofiction, memory, personal stories, emotions, distance, perspective, self-exploration
Disciplines
Creative Writing
Recommended Citation
Girvan, Elizabeth J., "Fact, Memory and Imagination: Merging Genre Elements to Tell Personal Stories" (2025). Masters Theses. 1364.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/1364
Abstract
This thesis examines how writers merge facts, memory, and imagination to tell personal stories by blending nonfiction and fiction. Drawing on genre and memory research, the argument is presented that memoir, autobiography, and autofiction occupy overlapping spaces, with autofiction functioning as a vehicle for writers to embrace memory’s elasticity and attain narrative distance, enabling a truthful yet fictionalized portrayal of experience. By embracing the freedom of fiction, writers are empowered to explore identity and meaning beyond the limits of lived experience while preserving the emotional truth that readers seek. The creative manuscript of the thesis presents an example of autobiographical fiction presented in a five-chapter novella. The story intertwines memory, illness, and family relationships through the emotional landscape of aging, loss, and the fragile bonds that hold a family together. The title Pay No Attention hints at the tension between denial and awareness that colors the narrator’s perspective as a daughter navigates her father’s decline and its impact on the household.
