Ruby Yassen

Ruby Yassen is a 4th-year English major at UCLA. She loves to spend time outside and crochet. She enjoys reading contemporary fiction as well as creative nonfiction, and is specifically interested in the genre of autofiction. Her thesis will study the works of Sheila Heti to explore the blurring of boundary between fantasy and reality in the genre of autofiction. She is interested in the collapse of genre itself, and the importance of liminal spaces in feminist writing and theorizing. She is also interested in the female body as a site of exploration throughout Heti’s work, and the way that Heti utilizes fantasy and myth. She aims to explore the erasure of the boundary between the imagination and “real life,” within Heti’s work. Specifically, hert thesis aims to situate Sheila Heti work within contemporary conversations about feminism and literature, and their relationship to genre.