Week 1: Introduction

Fantasy Bio Write a brief bio of yourself that is partly true, partly fabricated. Fabricate in a way that fulfills a fantasy (or several) of yours. Your fantasy can be wild or dark or glamorous or whatever you want it to be. And don’t be afraid to brag.  

Lizzie Hessek is temporarily residing in Cape Town, South Africa where she is waiting to board the semiannual postal ship destined for the small South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha. Her papers allow her to spend four months on Tristan, which she hopes is enough time to figure out what is a feasible next step for her. There is a bar on Tristan da Cunha – the loneliest bar in the world – called the Albatross. Lizzie has had many great ambitions in her life, and she has succeeded at most of them until recently. Once the postal ship arrives in Cape Town, she’ll funnel all her ambition into sipping a scotch, neat at the Albatross bar at the end of the world and let the peaty liquor burn its way down to the bottom of her throat.

She's an island woman at heart. Lizzie hails from St. Pierre et Miquelon, a forgotten crumb of French colonialism that continues to bob just off the coast of Newfoundland. Legally French, geographically Canadian, the folks on the island are all things and nothing at once. Lizzie is not an exception, despite leaving home for the French mainland at 17. She still knows the ferry schedule by heart. She still dreams of seals and seabirds. She still resembles the marshes rustling in salty winds, her love swaying as the tall grasses do. Her love is a wild, wide thing. Her love is uncontrollable, and, if the rumors are to be believed, irresistible. In the words of her earliest and most recent lovers, the most illustrious 16-year-old in the world grew up to be the golden goose. Her body is a crime against all things holy. She is, it has been said, phantasmagoric. 

In the summer months Lizzie returns to St. Pierre. She sits on the stony shores of the north Atlantic looking out toward something older. The empty sky above the sea seems as fixed in place as the oysters cemented to the ocean rocks. She sits on the stony shores of the north Atlantic with a flute of champagne and a hatchet. She just turned 18 when she learned to harvest oysters in La Rochelle. Her Uncle Didier led her into the other side of the Atlantic and passed her the ax. She spent the morning chopping at the animals’ moorings, dislodging them for dinner. That was work. That is what she returns to the beach every summer to do. She lets the sun set on her oyster dinner slimy sliding down her throat. Her throat that sang opera. Her throat that says she loves you so fearlessly and fast. Her heart follows where her throat leads.

You might have thought you led her here, to this shore, this time. You might have thought that at the time, but you are realizing that the light fractures when it hits the water. She was leading you from behind. Now you are both hiding in the legacy of fern spores and American writers and Lizzie’s dying father who couldn’t push roots into the places they floated down. You hate how she dazzles you swirling about in the Westerlies. You hate knowing she’s not expecting to land. She sighs deep sighs from her loving throat.