A haunting memoir of escape from Communist Romania in 1987, “Crossing Over” follows a teenage girl's journey from the suffocating certainty of life behind the Iron Curtain to the disorienting freedom of the West. Through vivid imagery of physical and metaphorical borders, from the literal crossing into Hungary to the psychological barriers of language and belonging, Diana Renner captures the profound cost of displacement with startling honesty.
Set against the backdrop of Ceaușescu's Romania and the Austrian refugee camps that served as waypoints to new lives, this award-winning story explores themes of identity, exile, and the spaces between worlds. With prose that moves between the political and the deeply personal, “Crossing Over” reveals how crossing a border can mean losing oneself entirely, only to discover what it truly means to be free.
Runner-up in the 2023 Ada Cambridge Biographical Prose Prize.
An atmospheric short story that follows an unnamed woman's nocturnal wandering through an unnamed city, “Incognita” blurs the boundaries between observer and observed, reality and memory. What begins as an aimless evening walk transforms into an exercise in voyeurism as the protagonist follows strangers through rain-soaked streets, documenting their intimate moments through the lens of her phone.
Inspired by Jean Baudrillard's philosophy of appearance and disappearance, the narrative explores themes of urban alienation, the act of looking, and the ways we seek connection in a world of strangers. As the protagonist films a couple's dance in the rain, she unwittingly becomes part of her own story when she discovers she too has been watched. With its dreamlike quality and cinematographic prose, “Incognita” examines how we project our own longings onto the lives of others, only to find ourselves reflected back in unexpected ways.
A meditation on exile, memory, and the mysterious threads that connect us across the anonymity of city life.
Runner-up in the 2024 Fabel International Short Story competition.