Appalachian Studies Commons^™

Shadow Smoke: A Nonfiction Collection On Memories Lost, Taken, And Storied, Sarah Ann Canterbury

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Shadow Smoke investigates the neuroscientific nature of memory and memory’s role/ authority in creative nonfiction as an illustration of how the genre lays the process of memory bare and accurately models the mind’s process of memory. The scholarship as well as body of creative works revolve around the understanding and tension of memory being a creative process which is explored through genre discussions, neuroscientific studies, and individual creative works. Shadow Smoke consists of four braided nonfiction essays and five nonfiction vignettes to form a collection on memories lost, taken, and storied framed by a critically researched introduction assessing the collection’s …

A Poetic Exploration Of Landscape And Negation In Larry Levis's The Dollmaker’S Ghost, Cynthia Mccomas

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The following thesis contains a collection of poetry, which portrays an exploration of landscape through negation and meditation. These poems often describe the region of Appalachia via a speaker who seeks wisdom through thoughtful images of nature and its decay. Prefacing the creative body is a critical introduction which highlights my influences, craft, and methods of writing. These poems were written while studying the poet Larry Levis, who provides an imaginative and thought-provoking perspective of natural landscapes and the people who coexist among them.

Hillbilly Heroin(E), Lauren Audrey Tussey

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

As a native to this region and a writer I have spent much of my life attempting to capture a unique aesthetic of what I see through my essays and poetry. The following thesis is a manuscript of nonfiction essays with a critical introduction and conclusion that work together to provide a cohesive narrative centered in the Appalachian region. Through place specific imagery and implementation of regional dialect, and a narrative lens, my collection reveals an aesthetic of the rapidly expanding genre of Appalachian Literature. By exposing the patriarchal structures present in the region and emphasizing issues such as domestic …

Why We Stay, Brittany Nicole Mcintyre

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Why we stay is a piece of Creative Non-Fiction, is a work that is heavily focused on region. The narrative takes up the life of a female Appalachian. The challenges of being an Appalachian woman raising a family are analyzed alongside such issues as domestic violence, family dysfunction, and mental illness. Because the piece is set in both rural and urban Appalachia, the issue of family is examined in terms of generational conflict and the strong bonds of a matriarch.

Heavier Than It Looks And Other Stories, Matthew Tobias Ray

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Heavier Than It Looks and Other Stories is a collection of fiction containing one novella-length story, in six parts, centering on the life of a young man coming to terms with a close friend’s suicide. The remaining stories depict different characters amidst situations unique to each character’s stage in life: childhood in 1930s Appalachia in "The Other Kid In a Candy Store," mourning and violent crime in "Picking A Lock," transcendence in "Pathétique," mid-life changes in "Lester’s Last Melancholy," managing addiction in "Staying Clean," youthful folly in "Just For Fun," and storytelling in "The Taste of a Story." Works that …

Canary In The Dark, Andrea Fekete

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

I began researching Appalachian culture in 1998. I wanted to tell a story about conflict and beauty while revealing my vision of who my people were/are. I strived to create a fiction not unlike poetry with realistic and minimalist features to give Appalachia the most accurate face possible as perceived by me through my own lens.

I wanted to explore the idea of beauty: Virginia’s (the main character) ideas about her beauty, her culture and other cultures. What is beauty? Who defines it? Can it be found everywhere? How? What does it look like when it is somewhere you wouldn’t …

Hit The Ground Running: A Novella And Other Stories, Lisa Robinson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This creative thesis contains a collection of short stories divided into two parts. The first half, a novella entitled Clothes on a Line, consists of a series of linked vignettes that depict the life of a young, unnamed Appalachian girl and her relationship with her promiscuous mother. Throughout the work, the narrator struggles to create and come to terms with her identity as she experiences the adversities of sexual abuse, death, alcoholism, and the looming “secret” of her unknown father. The second half, Consumed and Other Stories, features several short pieces that, while not inter-related like those in …

A Fisherman's Heritage, Matthew G. Cooke

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

I would not be a fisherman today, if it were not for my father. He taught me to fish, cast, tie a fisherman’s knot, identify one species of fish from another. He also taught me courage. Often when we fished from one of Kelley’s Island’s many limestone shores, Dad stopped casting and dropped to his knees beside a rock. With a quick hand, he snatched brown water snakes as long as his arm. Holding the writhing serpent in front of my face, he would order me to touch it.

When we were not fishing together, Dad let me wander off, …