From the very beginning, loving books came easier than loving myself. At three years old, home videos taken on a dusty camcorder feature me “reading” stories to a circle of plush bears and uninterested dolls. In elementary school, I’d spend hours circling new titles in book fair catalogs, saving up my allowance to buy the latest Junie B. Jones or Magic Tree House installment. For over two decades, books have helped me navigate joy, grief, insecurity, and everything in between. They were how I learned to make sense of my tumultuous or painfully monotonous world, and challenged the dimensions of my growing mind and heart.

Now, as a graduate student in Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program, I’m chasing the dream of sharing what I’ve always believed: storytelling can change the world. But it hasn’t always been as easy as getting lost in books about fairies with personality-coordinated outfits.  

I left for Boston on the precipice of my twenty-second birthday with little more than decade-old dragonfly-printed bed sheets and a lifelong dream. I’d just graduated from a small, rural university in North Carolina, unsure if I was ready for the next step, unsure if I could make it in publishing. But when I stepped into my tiny shoebox of an apartment in Boston’s North End, I could smell olive oil and roasted garlic through the open window, and I tried to romanticize the waves of uncertainty laced with familiarity—my twin bed, the student budget, the fear. That first night, as I lay in bed, staring at the barren walls and wrapped in sheets that once encompassed my five-year-old body, the irony was not lost on me. In the throes of my childhood identity, it felt like I was abruptly on the cliff of adulthood and perhaps something horrifically fantastic.

At first, grad school brought small victories: encouraging feedback on assignments, seeing my name on a byline for the first time, new people that I could share my innermost thoughts with after only a month of friendship. But by the end of September, I hit a wall. The high of starting a new life started to wear off, and like a flood rushing in, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly alone. I was surrounded by a life that bore my name but didn’t quite feel like mine.

I booked a spontaneous trip home—complete with four hours of Phoebe Bridgers soundtracking the Amtrak’s Northeast Regional train and concluding with a cathartic cry in the front seat of my dad’s car. But at home, I unearthed a discovery in my childhood basement: three journals from second and third grade. Pages filled with my earliest stories about birds and queens, and poems about flowers and sisters. They weren’t Mary Oliver quality, but they were undeniably mine. In one entry, I wrote about wanting to be a children’s book author. I had forgotten about that dream. Reading my words, etched in purple glitter pen and riddled with misspelled adjectives, reminded me that I intrinsically always knew who I had the potential to become. I’ve always been a writer. I’ve always wanted to tell stories. That girl, who once slept in the same sheets I still swim in now, wouldn’t possibly believe the opportunities she’s chasing.  

This desire to tell stories, preserve memory, and honor people who might otherwise be forgotten has always taken residency in my consciousness. Two years before the basement discovery, I found myself wandering a sun-scorched outdoor market in Lisbon, Portugal. My right sock kept slipping beneath my heel within my boot, folding over like a slice of bologna on rye, and amidst the chaos, I was drawn to a box of old photographs at a corner booth.

There were hundreds of them, Polaroids and prints, some in color but most black and white with yellowing edges and distinctive faces. There were men with cars, cats on windowsills, beaming wedding parties holding plates of vanilla cake. But one photo stopped me, devoid of color but revealing a mother and teenage daughter embracing, dated 1942. The girl peered at the camera intensely as her mother’s eyes locked on something beyond the lens. The way they held each other, the similarities of their Roman noses, seemed so familiar to me, and yet these people were strangers, perhaps even ghosts now.

Holding the photo against the sun’s glare, my thoughts churned with images of the women in my life, my bloodline, and I felt a surge of desperation to squeeze someone’s hand in mine just so I could feel small again. If I could buy this picture, salvage this mother and daughter, and put them somewhere safe in my room, they would never be forgotten. I would remember their faces, if not their true names and stories, but ones I’d make up and tell with love, regardless. And that is a task I want to spend the rest of my life doing.

That’s why I’m here, at Sundress and in the publishing industry. Sundress publishes the voices of those habitually silenced and pushes the boundaries of an accessible and inclusive literary world. Storytelling has always been a form of love and resistance, a way of remembering and reclaiming. I’m honored to support an independent press that shares these same values.

If I could speak to the eight-year-old girl with the dragonfly bedsheets and purple glitter pen, I think she’d understand exactly why I’m here.

Elizabeth “Lizzy” DiGrande is a graduate student in Emerson College’s Publishing and Writing program, where she also serves as a Transformational Leaders Fellow and Writing Assistant for the Emerson Grad Life Blog. She is on the board of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston chapter, and is passionate about amplifying women’s voices in publishing. Originally from New Jersey, Lizzy now resides in Boston and can often be found perusing the city’s public libraries or exploring new restaurants. She hopes to build a career as both a food writer and literary agent championing female-identifying authors.