Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Saying The Words, Lalini Shanela Ranaraja

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

This poem takes a viscerally personal approach to the "Time's Up" movement's philosophy of making revelations and facing difficult realities.

Freedom, Lalini Shanela Ranaraja

Vázquez-Valarezo Poetry Award

This poem explores the darker side of Facebook's role in sparking online activism and social movements.

North Atlantic Black, Chazz R. Chitwood

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

North Atlantic Black is a collection of contemplative, lyrical poems that explore issues of coming out, suicide, yearning, and male relationships.

Woven together, North Atlantic Black moves through different questions of masculinity encountered by the poet through the process of coming out. Early poems explore themes of masks, of theater, and of dressing and costume as means of escaping the traditional bounds of masculinity

North Atlantic Black further braids in concepts of home, how they relate to identity through heritage and expectation, and how they inform the poet’s thoughts on what it means for men to have relationships—how ideas of …

This Terrible Silence, Jeff Bonar

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This Terrible Silence is a collection of nineteen stand-alone stories. The work largely focuses on characters on the fringe of society—alcoholics, gamblers, thieves, liars, cheaters, and loners, who feel trapped or destined to repeat their troubles. In the struggle to break free, either by self-fulfillment or outside interference, these stories showcase the characters’ hearts and wills in the face of often daunting or insurmountable desperation.

The stories in this collection are influenced by the work of Raymond Carver, and the Dirty Realism of Larry Brown, Breece DJ Pancake, Jayne Anne Phillips, and others. With minimal exposition, the characters are laid …