In Progress

What does it mean to have a sense of place rooted in change?

Annette’s work in-progress traces her decades-long relationship with the city of Austin, Texas, a city wholly unlike any other.

She first falls for Austin as a wide-eyed freshman at the University of Texas. Disenchanted with big city life after a year, she leaves for the rival school, Texas A&M, only to be lured back after graduating. She spends a second short stint in Austin, then leaves it for another state. Yet, in the late nineties, its charms call to her again, and this time, she stays. She raises two native Austinites and begins a career teaching and writing — often about Austin.

Through the interplay of essay and graphic novel, Annette describes what it is to live in a place as it redefines itself from slacker town to techy city. Not one to keep to the background, Austin emerges as a fully-formed character whose life becomes inextricably entwined with Annette’s as she struggles to keep up.

Told through personal narrative and playful visual illustrations, the story asks,

“When you find that you and your city have grown apart, after all you have been through together, how do you let go? Or is there a chance that you’re both finding yourselves?”