In an age of texts and IMs, it’s not so hard to imagine having a conversation with someone sight unseen; we do it every day. Type out a message and hit send, and in a few seconds you have an answer to your question or a comment on your last statement. Speaking with someone not present—even half a world away—has come to feel “ordinary!”

It is this idea—that I could have a conversation with another person simply based on the words on a page—that came to me as I considered the idea of audience in diary writing. If diaries are written to a disembodied someone (as Margo Culley theorized), whether

Friend, lover, mother, God, future self—whatever role the audience assumes for the writer…

then why could I not do the same? Why could I not enter a conversation with someone, not just out of sight, but out of time? I just needed to find the right someone…

When I read the first entry in Emily Hawley Gillespie’s diary—written in 1858 on her 20^th birthday—I knew I had found my “someone.” Emily’s diary presented me with a powerful “I” to whom I could become audience and respond in kind. To be sure we were really compatible, I did a sort of “test response,” a short post which replied to her comments, both spoken and unspoken, and offered a story of my own. When I had finished, I realized that even over the vast gulf of time and space, Emily and I had found a common ground where one author’s voice could respond to another’s.

We were establishing a friendship.

For the next year or so, my conversation with Emily will span a 30 year period of her life—from her first entry at age 20 to her last just thirty years later. Emily and I will share stories of first love, marriage and children, disappointments and growing older. Although she died before reaching my current age, I know there is much we will share and learn from each other. Emily was a witness to history—as am I. And she both discovered and created her identity within the pages of her diary. This is a journey I look forward to making right alongside her.

And when it's complete, it’s a journey I hope to share with a larger world—just as she did. Our conversation will grow into what I hope to be my MA thesis/project—a book that will document our joint expedition.

Would you like to come along?