Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Escape Artists, Daniel Gene Hernandez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My thesis, “The Escape Artists”, is a collection of short fiction that represents most of the work I did as a creative writing master’s student. The title is taken from my longest story, a narrative about a young man’s struggle to avoid violence in a federal prison. As a title, “The Escape Artists” also captures major themes in my other stories; characters often pursue emotional escapism or literally seek to evade predators in my fiction. As a writer, I often explore breakdowns in social order, so my stories tend to be set in turbulent, oppressive political climates or else inside …

Las Vegas Paperboy, Matthew O'Brien

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I’m an author and journalist who has lived in Las Vegas since 1997. My first book, Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, chronicles my adventures in the city’s underground flood channels. My second book, My Week at the Blue Angel: And Other Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas, is a creative-nonfiction collection set in off-the-beaten-path Vegas. These two books grew out of my eight years as a writer and editor for Las Vegas CityLife alternative-weekly paper.

I enrolled in UNLV’s MFA creative-writing program in the fall of …

Six City: A Novel, Leah Bailly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Six City is a 93 000 word voice-driven novel that traverses six countries as it follows its protagonist, a woman known only as S---, after she is reported missing by her family. A lingerie-shop owner and politician's wife, S--- reinvents her identity from Barcelona to Morocco, through Mauritania, Senegal and Mali, and eventually into Sierra Leone. S--- is hotly pursued by a devoted "Following," but when search efforts descend south into sub-Saharan Africa, the Following discovers that S--- has been found dead in the outskirts of Freetown. The result: a massive chase across multiple continents, tracing the steps of a …