Creative Writing Commons^™

The Greeley Variations, Mary Haidri

Dissertations and Theses

Inspired by the works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, European snake folklore, and "wished-for child" fairy tales, "The Greeley Variations" features several generations of women and the Victorian house they live in. The novel explores prospective parenthood, maternal legacy, and repeated patterns (visual, genetic, and psychological) as haunting experiences.

Communion Anthropoid, Joshua Stanek

Dissertations and Theses

In National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation, a man of good will offers all he has to a dear brother-in-law--recognizing the snakes he keeps as toys, the camper, the stones, dirt, and arid shrubbery are likewise dear to him. They go out to the desert at night and dig shallow holes, seemingly at random. Their imprecision is surprisingly fruitful. Imagine the constellation they made for the stars. In Communion Anthropoid, I am digging shallow holes in the dark with a mind to unearth what I believe I have lost. The dearness, I suppose. These poems vary in form from eight …

Le Chemin Détourné, Ailie Coffey

University Honors Theses

Le Chemin détourné is an original fairy tale in French about Melisende and Olivier Fournier. One day, Melisende disappears on her way home. Although her disappearance is a mystery, she was taken prisoner by the fairies as revenge against her mother. Her father Jehan and brother Olivier are very distressed, Jehan goes out after her immediately but, worried about Olivier’s safety, asks him not to go out after his sister. On the third night that she is gone, Olivier decides to go out to look for her anyways, and even though he is terrified to leave home, he sets out …

The Little Magazine In The Digital Era: A Startup Guide, Dan Chilton

University Honors Theses

The primary goal of this project is to outline steps for success in the development of the little magazine (aka, the literary magazine) in today's digitally dominated world. Through literary analysis, interviews with established editors from various fields, houses, and magazines, and a consideration of my own time working with multiple publications, I've set out to offer a startup guide for those interested in delving into the impactful world of literary forums, herein referred to as little magazines.

Mourning In Eco-Poetics & Cellar As Linguistic Category, Gwen Moon

University Honors Theses

These poems are informed by ecopoetics as defined by Forest Gander: "If natural processes are already altered by and responsive to human observation, how does poetry register the complex interdependency that draws us into a dialogue with the world?" Because the backdrop of our lives is changing with increasing signs of eco-collapse, our bodies are constantly sensing fear and loss. These poems merge the personal with the global in an attempt at a corporeal language that conveys meaning as a felt sense over a cerebral relationship. To quote William Wenthe, "…there is something physical, corporeal about our experience of syntactic …

The Myths They Make Of Us, Kaitlin Stone

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the relationship between myth and personhood. The societal constructs placed on us all, but specifically women, appear throughout cultures as mythology. How do these myths impact our identities? How can we utilize mythos and storytelling to reject, disrupt, or complicate those myths?

The Weak, The Wicked, The Divine: A Collection Of Poems, Grace Hedin

University Honors Theses

The Weak, the Wicked, the Divine is a collection of thirteen original poems based on the female figures of the Iliad and the Odyssey with scholarly analysis. The Introduction gives background on Homer and his works as well as their impact on both modern day and myself. The second section contains both the original work of Grace Hedin and the author's scholarly analysis of both their own work and the figure the poem is based upon. The Conclusion will hold the final thoughts and dedications from the author. An audio reading of all poems is attached to this thesis, with …

Space And Identity In J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times Of Michael K, Joshua Baker

University Honors Theses

Occupying colonial governments establish and maintain power through the demarcation and control of space, a process Sara Upstone terms "overwriting". In Life & Times of Michael K, Coetzee imagines the complication of establishing and maintaining a self-identity amid the strict control of space in post-apartheid, wartime South Africa, and it is this conflict of identity which comprises the novel’s subplot. The reader follows Michael K's odyssey over hundreds of miles in his quest to find the farm on which his mother was born and raised. His journey is repeatedly thwarted by state actors who enforce a strict control of movement …

You Will Be Loved: A Mixtape, Ariana M. Rosales

Dissertations and Theses

The following mix-genre portfolio represents my work in literary translation, nonfiction, and fiction writing. These poems, essays, and stories explore the role of gender and sexuality in familial and interpersonal relationships in the social, historical, and political context of contemporary Bolivian and American cultures. The characters inhabiting this collection experience alienation while seeking belonging and meaningful connections in the face of an uncertain political future. These pieces explore themes such as marginalization of queer people, the subjugation and closeting of the indigenous in the face of mestizaje, and the colonial legacy shared by Bolivia and the United States.

Reclaiming The "I": Memoir Writing As Feminist Activism, Michela Sottura

University Honors Theses

When I set out to write about my body and what happened to me, I knew I was going to have to sit with parts of myself I had long silenced, overlooked, maybe even abandoned. When I first took a class on women's memoir writing I was struck by the power of the stories we read. I felt like a door had been opened for me, as I witnessed the importance of sharing one's personal lived history. Reading the words of women with different identities and experiences than mine taught me how memoir can inspire, challenge, educate, rewrite, heal, and …

Mary: A Creative Biography Of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Through The Lens Of Her Interpersonal Relationships, Julien-Pierre E. Campbell

University Honors Theses

Mary is a creative thesis told in first-person vignettes spaced throughout Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s entire life. The work seeks to function as a creative biography, fictionalized but exploring the very real and impactful interpersonal relationships she held dear. Mary Shelley was an incredibly multifaceted person. She was at turns daring and iconoclastic, reserved and private, outgoing and adventurous, deeply depressed and bitter. She worked through much of her personal trauma and turmoil in her novels. She had trauma in spades. Three of her four children died young. Her mother died giving birth to her. Her beloved elder sister committed suicide. …

Great Sand Sea, Nada Sewidan

Dissertations and Theses

This is a collection of essays regarding land and identity tied with the personal experiences of my family's immigration from Egypt to America.

Palisadia: A Novel Byte, Gretchen Amanda Adams

University Honors Theses

A creative writing thesis which uses the lens of fiction to explore femininity, sexual violence, and the nature of artificial consciousness.

Thorpes Falls, Natalie Guerin

University Honors Theses

Thorpes Falls is a creative piece exploring the relationship of several characters within a small town, at the end of which is a craft essay addendum explaining the process and research that went into creating the piece.

Nine Times Out Of Ten, You Don't Die, Patrick Ronald Wensink

Dissertations and Theses

My novel, "Nine Times Out of Ten, You Don't Die," is the story of Layla Wisnewski and her quest to write a book about her famous father. In the 1970s, "Big Dan" Wisnewski was a motorcycle stuntman who broke more bones than anyone living. He jumped cars and buses and rivers atop a white Harley Davidson. Big Dan was considered an American Hero.

Fast forward forty years, Big Dan has been dead for decades, and his daughter Layla is writing a book about his life. While researching the book, she learns she was kidnapped as a baby. This …

Untitled Screenplay, Lora A. Herman

University Honors Theses

The following document is a working copy of an untitled fictional screenplay in which the story and characters are the original work of Lora A. Herman.

In 2082 North America, the United States no longer exists as a governing entity. The vast majority of the landscape that once comprised the USA is unlivable due to irreparable advances in climate change -- flood, fire, freeze, and drought.

The remaining society has restructured itself to focus less on controlling its population and their free will, and to instead focus on maintaining the integrity of and resources for the man-made contained communities that …

Murmuration, Braeden Dillenbeck

Dissertations and Theses

The poems that comprise Murmuration are an act of vigilance in the face of loss. At certain moments in the distorted timeline of grief one searches the remaining world around them for signs of the beloved, signs that they are not simply gone but instead transformed or dispersed into another way of being. In this looking one's relationship to the external world undergoes a radical transformation of its own and demands a sustained attention from the bereaved that often draws from, but ultimately outruns cataloguing acts of memory. These poems attempt to render the movements of that attention as it …

Lady Grimm, Tessa Livingstone

Dissertations and Theses

Lady Grimm is a conceptual assemblage. A substrate of fairy tales, fables, and nursery rhymes provide a basis for transformative and macabre frames, specifically concerning a stillbirth in 1940s Scotland. The collection utilizes the folklore genre to navigate a world of uncertainty and realities too difficult for its speakers to face. It further critiques the assumption of voice being restricted to human cognition. Animalistic totems as sea lions, peacocks, rabbits, and iguanas are some of the spirits summoned in order to explore themes such as motherhood, irreversible loss, abandonment, and choice within choicelessness. The collection begins in tragedy but gestures …

You Are D. B. Cooper, James Bezerra

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is a novel about the 1971 skyjacking of a plane out of Portland Airport. The novel is structured in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure book. It investigates the nature and identity of the skyjacker, who is known as D. B. Cooper.

Lighter Than I Remember, Shane Hayden

Dissertations and Theses

It is pointless to track one's progress along the energies of the cosmic sea, when independent of the immensely malleable sonic waves, and erase the cessation of elevation. The release never reaches the essence and the static repels them when they are devoid of the white dwarfs or their spiral arms: there is nothing tangible in not exploiting the mind/body connection. At last the summit is exalted. Miniscule solar rays expand into darkness, unhinged and must be nurtured, thought by thought, until magnified in nerve impulse and then put to rest by the still water, thus more quickly compiled, constricted …

At The Trail's End, Naomi Marshall

Dissertations and Theses

Oregon City lies at the base of Willamette Falls. It was one of the few known points in the Oregon Territory, as the destination for thousands coming overland to lay claim to the acres upon acres of forested land. Presently, Oregon City is known by its proximity to Portland. The two neighboring settlements were considered "long-distance," when on a spring evening in 1889, energy generated from the falls was carried through 14 miles of recently-laid copper wire to power streetlights in downtown Portland's Chapman Square. It was the first ever long-distance transmission of electricity. Oregon City, the oldest incorporated settlement …

Animals Coupling: Stories, Corey Robert Millard

Dissertations and Theses

We find ourselves at a unique place in American history: language is losing its value; decency--or "political correctness"--is becoming taboo; and our future is legislated by those who feel they have been left behind. The stories in Animals Coupling don't attempt to explain contemporary America, but they do attempt to demonstrate (through language, character, style, and circumstance) an expressive rendering of what it looks and feels like to live in the here and now. There is a sense of detachment threading through these works, along with absurdity, loneliness, humor and anomie. But though a minor key may ring loudest, Animals …

To Disappear, Rachel Chenven Powers

Dissertations and Theses

This is a selection of linked lyric essays, covering explorations of memory, experience, nature, transcendence, insignificance, orientation, boredom, privilege, vocation, and more.

Time Spent Away, Andrew Mitin

Dissertations and Theses

After the death of his father, Joshua Klein drops out of college and moves to Chicago. Alone in the city and with nothing of consequence to do, he attempts to justify to himself the ways of God, the sense of an early death and what is the good to do in life.

In this excerpt of Time Spent Away, Joshua seeks out the hidden aspects of the city and his spirit. Guided by his father's Bible and the formative texts of his undergraduate coursework, he sets out to complete his own education. During a tour of The Auditorium Building …

Stellar Works: Searching For The Lives Of Women In Science, Jennifer Elizabeth Woodman

Dissertations and Theses

While women have had a profound impact in the world of science, they struggle to gain an equal foothold in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields today. This has led to considerable public and private sector efforts to recruit women into these arenas. In order to understand how schools and nonprofits engage today's young women in STEM studies, this account includes time spent both in high school science classrooms and with ChickTech -- a Portland-based organization that works to provide a pathway into tech careers for high school-aged girls.

A historical perspective reveals that modern women aren't treading …

Untitled, Alexander Scott Dannemiller

Dissertations and Theses

Deeply concerned with body politics, sexual slavery, identity, and technology, this work takes a serious and brutally honest route through the close perspectives of those living it moment by moment. With influences from science fiction, horror, weird, and literary fiction, the untitled novel blends genres for a disturbing account. This novel also plays with constraints in the spirit of many constraint-based writing movements, without the inclusion of names, few identifying markers, and in publication the removal of title, chapter numbers, page numbers, and author name.

Ordinary Women/Extraordinary Lives: Oregon Women And Their Stories Of Persistence, Grit And Grace, Shannon Moon Leonetti

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis tells the stories of five Oregon women who transcended the customary roles of their era. Active during the waning years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, each woman made a difference in the world around them. Their stories have either not been told or just given a passing glance. These tales are important because they inform us about our society on the cusp of the twentieth century.

Hattie Crawford Redmond was the daughter of a freed slave who devoted herself to the fight for women's suffrage. Minnie Mossman Hill was the first woman …

Being Human: How Four Animals Forever Changed The Way We Live, What We Believe, And Who We Think We Are, Jocelyn Mary Brady

Dissertations and Theses

Our lives would not be what they are today without animals. From the food we eat, to the clothes we wear, animals provide tangible evidence of their importance every day. But more than that, animals have shaped who we are and what we believe. Often in ways we don't see.

That's what inspired me to write Being Human. This work began as an examination of how humans have altered animals to better match our imaginations and ideals, and too, the way these animals have irrecoverably altered how we live and look at the world. Consider, for example, that before they …

All Begins To Bloom: Stories, Daniel Drew Schlegel

Dissertations and Theses

A collection of short stories, All Begins to Bloom follows a range of young protagonists living in the greater Los Angeles area. In a time when even the most underground lifestyles are commodified, when Independent media is just another genre, when every mode of living has seemingly been exhausted, these characters struggle to forge an identity in the face of adulthood.

From a group of surfers reeling from a careless death ("The Pier") to a young artistic couple brought together by the will to overcome an eating disorder ("All Begins to Bloom"), these stories explore the hollow promises among various …

Phantom Islands A Collection Of Short Stories, Marie Buckner

Dissertations and Theses

This collection of short stories takes its name from various islands historically believed to exist and at one time or other located on maps, sometimes remaining on them for centuries, but later removed after they were proved to be illusory. Reports of these islands usually came from sailors as they explored new realms, mistaking actual islands for imaginary ones or by geographical error. Illusions can persist unchallenged for ages. A similar yet modern illusion is the persistence of vision, a phenomenon by which an afterimage, say, on a screen, is thought to persist on the retina for approximately one twenty-fifth …