A Map of One’s Own: Cartography and the Interspatialities of Writing in Memory

Following a beloved colleague’s passing, the author contributed to a memorial volume about her work as a geographer. This task, carried out two years after her death, rekindled my grief. Unexpectedly, my personal and professional experiences on a Virginia Woolf literary trail in London became central to this process. In fact, a self-made map of Bloomsbury literary sites employed on that occasion became a catalyst for remembrance and writing, in connection with my lost colleague’s academic interests in literary geography, gender studies, and tourism. This map served as a focal point for processing memories and emotions, linking disparate spatial experiences, and navigating the challenging task of expressing grief through writing. Starting from this writing event, the self- reflection, close reading, and theoretical argumentation presented here aim to contribute to existing works on mapping and mourning by expanding them in three directions: the process of memory- writing, the mobility of grief and the role of objects. This is done by drawing from autobiographical studies, methodologies and genres, geo-literary contributions and the concept of interspatiality, as well as object-oriented approaches to maps.