Digital Commons Network^™

An Unstable Container, John Lapine

All NMU Master's Theses

An Unstable Container is a collection of short creative nonfiction essays and poetry, with influences from personal memoir, lyric essays, race and gender studies, and poetry. The work examines the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, and the ways in which language, society, and the human body contribute to the construction of one's sense of self. Through the lenses of language, modern technology, medicine, and genetics, An Unstable Container explores blackness, queerness, masculine identity, growing up in rural Michigan, and the dangers and pleasures of corporeality. The collection also interrogates the social institutions of marriage and religion, gender roles, and …

A Road Out Of Naknek Part One: The Tide Turns, Keith Wilson

All NMU Master's Theses

I make an annual summertime return to Naknek, a town on Bristol Bay where the salmon have made their own annual summertime return for thousands of years. My thesis is a series of nonfiction essays about my background there, both as a commercial fisherman and my upbringing. It is something I consider the “Part One” of a book still under the process of writing. It is a series of essays, alternating these two motifs of the salmon and of my experiences growing up somewhere like Naknek.

I constructed this thesis to read like the tide. Bristol Bay salmon go out …

Hollowend, Hayley M. Fitz

All NMU Master's Theses

Hollowend is a novel set in the small town of, surprise, Hollowend. This is a place where the supernatural is ordinary. The story is told by two narrators: Hettie, a crime scene cleaner whose eye has gone missing; and Harlan, a "private investigator" who isn't actually a private investigator. He's a serial killer—the Widowmaker, according to the local press. He's been terrorizing Hollowend for the past three years, only getting away with it because of his influence magic, which allows him to convince anyone of anything. It even allows him to scrub Hettie's memory after his many failed attempts to …

The Saleing Subculture, Hayli M. Cox

All NMU Master's Theses

The Saleing Subculture is a collection of short and flash creative nonfiction essays with influences including travel writing, cultural studies, lyric essays, and memoir. Each essay attempts to contribute to a larger understanding of a unique subculture of yard salers as well as a single woman’s family dynamic within the culture. The collection also endeavors to interrogate relationships between people and the meanings they give to the objects they engage with or choose to cast away.

In Post Memoriam: An Exploration Of Family And Grieving, Courtney A. Mauck

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of essays, poems, and fiction details the author’s exploration of familial trauma and grief. The author wrestles with the concept of “postmemory” as theorized by Marianne Hirsch and questions what it means to have the experiences of someone else passed down through generations. The collection includes essays on the connection between eggs and ovarian cancer, the exploration of animal magnetism, as well as a fictional recreation of a familial story. By braiding several forms of writing together, the work aims to create an interwoven narrative that questions the very concept of memory.

Walking In Waves, Sarah David

All NMU Master's Theses

The following thesis consists of a story collection, the majority of which are flash fiction pieces. The thesis consists of two sections. The first section, “Walking in Waves,” is composed of stories about familial relationships and the balancing act of motherhood. Some of these stories play with unique formats or degrees of speculative fiction. Many are rather lyrical in nature. The second section is a novella-in-flash; entitled “Tiny’s Jazz Magic,” this series of stories tells the tale of a woman and her young daughter in 1920’s Storyville, New Orleans.