Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Follow The Shimmer, Meghan Bradbury

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Follow the Shimmer is a creative thesis collection of poems and songs that explore the depths of trauma, love, and healing. Told through the lens of fairy tale and fantasy, it is a story of grief and hope. Some of the tales are familiar, others are strange and abstract. Fables and nursery rhymes are remixed by the hands of a daughter who wishes for her deceased mother's touch. Archetypes and mythology are scrambled through the kaleidoscopic eyes of a woman who survives the violence of a patriarchal society. The world becomes a landscape of dangerous yet magical realms to discover; …

Coalescing Finish, Daniel James Mcminn

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

This thesis comprises five short stories, the climactic chapter of a novel, two short plays, one short screenplay, and two poems by Daniel James ("Dan") McMinn. The work focused on satisfying endings. Most of the work is speculative fiction---either science fiction or fantasy. The work is prefaced by a statement describing Dan's development as a writer in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program. The short stories address the following topics:

• An aging salesman gets replacement internal organs and becomes an opera singer

• A female presidential candidate must keep a straight face while watching a ridiculous PSA

• A sniggler (eel-catcher) …

Catching Fireflies, Stephanie Mejia Loleng

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Included in this thesis are five short stories and the start of a novel. Themes include Filipino American and Filipino cultural identity, definitions of home, and first and second generational family interpersonal relationships. The stories are written in either first or second-person point of view, mainly from a female perspective. The settings for the stories feature natural and urban landscapes including locations in Northern California, New York City, the Philippines, Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Prague. The main characters are Filipino or Filipino Americans who experience feelings of loneliness, internal conflict, parental pressure, and both platonic and romantic love.

The Yelping: Essays And Stories, Anthony Marvullo

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

The Yelping is a collection of essays and short stories that focus thematically on the evolution of a relationship from courtship to marriage. The essays explore loneliness and ego and identity and mortality, while the short stories do the same, except under the guise of fiction. Many of the pieces start with a minor misunderstanding or a failure of communication, and the humor and crises that result.

One Bruised Apple, Stacie Mccall Whitaker

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

The Quinn Family is always moving, and sixteen-year-old Sadie is determined to find out what they’re running from. In yet another new neighborhood, Sadie is befriended by a group of teens seemingly plagued by the same sense of tragedy that shrouds the Quinn family. Sadie quickly falls for Trenton, a young black man, in a town and family that forbids interracial relationships. As their relationship develops and is ultimately exposed, the Quinn family secrets unravel and Sadie is left questioning all that she thought she knew about herself, her family, and the world.

Wearing Bare Feet, J. P. Schlottman

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Wearing Bare Feet is a linked collection of wry short stories about a family of three on fictional Eel Island, three miles off the coast of Maine, an island that revolves around lobstering, tourism, billionaire movie stars, department store heirs, jewelry store heiresses, people who houseclean for snowbirds ... and the old, rich and entitled summer people who come back from Florida for the annual Fourth of July Parade, and then die. Because it is easier to die there. It is why the 13-mile-long "rock off America" has more ambulances per capita than anywhere else in New England.

It also …

Gnaw Bone, Tiffany Joslin

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Even in the woods of Indiana (in an unincorporated community called Gnaw Bone, to be exact) life happens much as it happens elsewhere—people fight, they fall in love, they go to jail. I escaped this place of my childhood and moved to Washington, D.C., where I learned that much is the same no matter where I go. By exploring significant moments of my childhood in the region many call the Heartland and comparing it to my new city life, I touch on themes our country as a whole is pondering—identity, belonging, acceptance, and greed. I shine a light on an …

This Is Not Your Life, Ella M. Carroll-Smith

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

My novel, This Is Not Your Life examines themes of identity, class, and fate. Identical twin sisters, Annie and Quinn Graves, shared a troubled childhood, which led each of them down very different life paths. Annie is now climbing the corporate ladder at work, while Quinn leads the perfect family life in Richmond’s elite suburbs. And yet, they’re both unhappy, yearning for something different than the lives that seem to have chosen them. The two women decide to switch places for a while, hoping for a change of scenery and lifestyle. However, that decision has potentially disastrous consequences for them …

The Beast Inside, Steve Cave

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

This thesis contains the first seven chapters of the novel Ravenous, the short story “Faithfall,” and the academic paper “From Hellhound to Hero: Tracking the Shifting Shape of the 21st Century Werewolf.” Both of the stories deal with werewolves as a common element, but use very different types of werewolves in each. The werewolves of Ravenous transform through losing control or giving in to their passions, while the werewolves in “Faithfall” change only with the full moon, and retain no control once transformed. Both stories have a gay male protagonist, though also in very different ways. Ravenous follows the story …

Heart Of The Machine, Lauren Liebowitz Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Rion lives as a roach in the down-below, sharing what little she has with other kids in need. An encounter with a dead body leaves her with what seems like someone else's memories in her head--Obsidian, one of the synthetic humanoid Protectors who battle against unknown, inhuman invaders. Rion's everyday struggle to survive and keep her friends safe is complicated by this unfamiliar, unwanted presence. As she searches for a cure or at least an explanation, she comes to the attention of different powers at play who want access to Obsidian's memories, at any cost. Soon she is fighting not …

Currency, Elisha M. Emerson Mfa

All Student Scholarship

The privileged Watters family, David, Winnie, and their 14-year-old daughter, Faye, struggle to adjust their suburban Charlotte lifestyle to fit a much-reduced income. Their fast failure leads them down separate paths: David after enlightenment through Transcendental Meditation, Faye after the power she feels in the company of her handsome Earth Science teacher, and Winnie in a romantic foray to Alaska after buried gold. Currency probes that moment when everything changes size, when initial annoyances shrink and reality resumes a new and disturbing sense of proportion.

Crisis Across The Dog-Starred Verse: Tales Of Heroism, Horror, And Apocalypse, David Arroyo

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Crisis Across the Dog-Starred Verse: Tales of Heroism, Horror, and Apocalypse is a collection of formal and free-verse poems. Although a few pieces are confessional in nature, many of the poems borrow from the genres of speculative fiction: horror and science fiction specifically. The thesis is not divided into sections, rather it alternates visions of a confessional real world and fantasy space. Many poems cover the death of my dog and our adventures in the multiverse, while others like “Together We Are Monsters” are meditations on monsters and pornography. Two longer pieces, however, “Campus of the 21st Century,” and “The …

Black In Maine, Joseph Nathadus Jackson Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Black in Maine is a collection of poetry composed around the narrative of poetry being used as a source of liberation and rehabilitation for incarcerated persons. The poems find several protagonists self-reflecting or speaking to an assumed audience about their experiences as prisoners within the Maine Department of Corrections.

I Am Adele Bloch-Bauer, I Am Hester Prynne, Laurie Lico Albanese Mfa

All Student Scholarship

I AM ADELE BLOCH-BAUER, I AM HESTER PRYNNE is a compilation of fiction and nonfiction. This cross-genre thesis includes two excerpts from historical novels with female protagonists, and an essay on women’s historical fiction. For the study and creation of female-centered historical fiction I researched and wrote in a wide range of areas, both intellectual and temporal. First, I read and traced the emergence of female-focused American historical fiction that began with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and continues today with historical fiction based in fact such as Lily King’s Euphoria and Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife and Circling the …

String Lights, Amanda Jennifer Pleau Mfa

All Student Scholarship

String Lights is a nonfictional, creative exploration of relationships. Themes in this collection include digital communication, the cultural influence of music and music retailers, coming of age, sex, love, true crime, and travel.

No Invented Mystery, Blake Love Mfa

All Student Scholarship

This collection of poems is comprised of many recollected experiences that are personally revealing about me, both as poet and person. I often explore the dynamics of domesticity between queer men and detail the dissolution of coming together with another. Laughter as a means of subverting or avoiding trauma is a theme that runs throughout my thesis. It is intended to be read like one might view a mosaic. The narrative threads tie together by its end to tell a story that speaks to a sense of abjection and otherness many of us carry. To temper the intensity of the …

Fire In The Garden, Troy A. Myers Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Fire in the Garden is a collection of poems primarily confessional in nature that deal with changes during mid-life: moving to a new house, having a son go to college and the subsequent abandonment of the marriage by one partner. The biographical experiences are often accompanied by landscape details taken from the garden and yard of the new house where the speaker lives.

De Gustibus Non Disputandum Est, William Henry Ferguson Mfa

All Student Scholarship

De Gustibus non Disputandum Est is a collection of essays striving to describe a world, natural and emotional, that in the eyes of this author needs attention. The essays hope to express ways of ameliorating our out of control spiral towards the destruction of beauty and kindness.

The Healing Power Of Horses: On Riding, Writing & Grieving, Cathy La Forge Mfa

All Student Scholarship

The Healing Power of Horses: On Riding, Writing & Grieving is a collection of essays that bring together the three stated themes-grieving, writing and horseback riding-as a means of healing that I discovered following the death of my husband. Each essay centers on one of these themes contributing to the telling of an entire story

Her Name Is Quintana Roo: Essays, Poetry, Memoir, Linda Q. Lambert Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Her name is Quintana Roo is a collection of essays, poetry, and memoir through the lens of the author's experience as a child, mother, wife, journalist, and librarian. The dominant thread is the establishment of a septuagenarian's enchantment with words and writing.

Eyre, Andrea Lesley Adams Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Charlotte Bronte's semi-autobiographical 1847 novel Jane Eyre is the source inspiration for EYRE, an illustrated adaptation . EYRE takes the protagonist Jane, an orphaned governess, and places her in a fantastical construct which bridges the worlds of 19th century Japan and England. Jane's story becomes one of an unexpected warrior battling the dark demons of alienation and desire which populate her psyche. Characters are reinterpreted as mythological creatures from within the Japanese spiritual pantheon.

Grace, Trees, And Getting On My Knees: A Memoir About The Beginning Of My Recovery, Kateri Patrice Hall Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Having struggled with drug and alcohol abuse on and off for almost three years, I finally reached my proverbial bottom on May 5, 2010 at only 21 years of age.

Chasing Freedom: A Novel Excerpt, Dallas Funk Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Chasing Freedom is a young adult novel set in a future Savannah, Georgia where children can be genetically engineered in a rainbow of colors to their parents' specifications and scientific logic informs every aspect of society.

Sampaguita, Alexandria Delcourt Mfa

All Student Scholarship

This thesis contains the first 115 pages of a novel that takes place in the Philippines between 1908 and 1944. The main character , Sampaguita, is a young girl who is growing up in a house with her wealthy father, a prominent lawyer in their town, his wife, their children, as well as her mother who is a concubine and dances waltzes with American soldiers in the local cantina for 10 cents per song, and the rest of her siblings.

Rambling Through The Heart Of It All, Danara Wallace Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Rambling through the Heart of it All is a collection of short stories crafted with special focus on the experience of living where Midwestern agriculture and industry seep in to the low hills of Appalachia. Each story is set in rural Ohio and offers a glimpse of characters seeking to understand their individual identities while interacting in small- town communities. Poverty, Christian faith, heritage, isolation, loss, determination, nature, family tradition, and relationships tangle through the life of each character. While male characters are vital in each story ,my own existence in a traditional , male-oriented, rural community has compelled me …

Coming To Terms, Kathleen Cerveny Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Coming to Terms, by Kathleen Cerveny, is a collection of poems exploring loss: of a long-term romantic relationship, of parents, and of youth. Taken together, the poems describe a journey through a range of emotions and the missteps and triumphs along the way. Dreams figure importantly in the collection. Dream-culled imagery is used to explore and express what is often hidden, suppressed, or actively denied in the face of loss. Sound and rhythm are consistent lyric elements throughout as are the use of assonance, alliteration, slant and internal rhyme. There is attention paid, but not slavish adherence to, metrical patterns. …

Steady Song Of The Heart: Memoir And Meditation, Susan Jean Perschbacher Mfa

All Student Scholarship

In these memoirist essays I interweave my life stories with sojourns in nature and my spiritual journey. Not a narrative of horrific abuse and trauma , it is an account similar to those of other women growing up the 1950's, a time of pretense that social problems did not exist, that the United states was a place of upward mobility-except if you were black, poor, female or otherwise removed from a life of privilege.

Born With Their Hearts In Their Mouths, Karin Serpentina Eberhardt Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Born with Their Hearts in Their Mouths is a collection of chapter excerpts and an essay. Taken from two non-fiction books in progress, the chapter excerpts are written on seemingly disparate topics: the increasingly rare Spoon-billed Sandpiper, and the enduring Kachin people of northern Myanmar.