Letters from Real is short fiction tumblr blog where author, Abria Mattina shares about the postcards that she mails out to anonymous readers. When I stumbled across this project I was immediately curious so I've invited Abria to share the behind the scenes scoop on this brilliant project!
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What inspired you to start Letters from Real, the postcard exchange project?
It’s not an exchange project precisely. I just send postcards, but I’m not set up to receive them. Maybe in the future I’ll open a P.O. box for that purpose, but for the time being it’s just me sending out postcards to random people, written in the voice of fictional characters. I do it because I think it’s a fun and interesting way to engage with new people. I’m also a dork who thinks that snail mail is fun to send and receive.
The project itself, though, was inspired by my mother. When I was in my second year of university she started sending my postcards from a character named Henrietta Von Espy, world-traveller and Victorian countess. She kept the same character across a long series of postcards, but I like to switch it up every time. When she got sick in 2012, I sent her a postcard every day for months.
Please share your favorite postcard to date, and tell us what makes it special.
Most of the postcards I received from my mom are pasted into my journals, but here are three of the loose ones. They all come from a postcard/calendar flipbook with pictures of doors from the Scanlan Portfolio. Every story featured the person or family Henrietta Von Espy met behind that door.