Creative Writing Commons^™

What The Unburied Said, Katharine Rees

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

"What the Unburied Said" is a short collection of documentary poetry written during the waning years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In conversation with T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, it seeks to exalt the beauty of humans who help each other live within an often-tragic, always-fascinating world.

Naturally: Memory In Verse, Heather L. Drouse

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of free verse poetry that I have written that share a common theme of nature and family. This is a creative work that explores my personal memories and the feelings associated with them with the intention to spread joy and cause readers to reflect upon similar experiences they might have had as children. It consists of four major sections -- mother, father, love, and bridges -- and 18 poems, with "love" having 7 minor sections.

100 Million, Cade Scott

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alec, an 18-year-old filmmaker, decides to bunk with a group of TikTok stars in a mansion in the suburbs of LA in hopes of becoming as famous as them one day. But, he soon finds out that they plan to keep him behind the scenes. Forced to continue helping them film and post their videos, he starts witnessing shady events involving his step-brother, Kevin. The events reach a crescendo when some of the TikTok stars accidentally disappear. Alec investigates and discovers a sinister plot, and then he finds himself in a fight for his life. Which ends with him narrowly …

Kaboom, Karstin Margaret Johnson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of original poems written between Fall 2018 and Spring 2022.

The Same River Twice, Claire Remy Pincumbe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a portion of a novel written during my time at the University of Arkansas.

Do You Want To Be Tender?, Leah Grant

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, you will find a body of writings and artworks that reflect Leah Grant’s art practice and research. Throughout the paper, you will see Leah alternate back and forth between her artwork and writings. Leah Grant addresses her personal experience as a Black woman and what it means it explore vulnerability through understanding how the relationships around her affects the relationship she has with herself. Leah has created a collection of poems, prints, and video and audio collages that assist her with revealing and concealing.

Love Paint And Other Private Vegetables, Victoria Hudson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite her remarkably low score on the Morse Fall Scale, Dolores shattered her femur in August of 2018. Some studies suggest that grief began there: a fracture, a wail—but the mechanism by which we came to recognize it, to plant it in our beds, remained unexplained, and the role of the daughter was controversial. Who gardens? What is the optimal depth for this sort of burial? Rootbound women with a clinical presentation of imminent loss were eligible to participate; we had thought to control the study but found no suitable placebo. The vegetables were necessarily randomized, the paint stratified according …

Mineral Rites, Emma Van Dyke

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of original poems written between Fall 2017 and Spring 2021.

Poems And Translations, Rome Hernández Morgan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This document is separated into two parts, a collection of original poems and a collection of translations of the crônicas of Rubem Braga. The collection of poems, titled, “Because I Never See You,” attempt to parse the complexities of familial and intimate relationships, addiction, and BIPOC experience. The collection of translations attempts to offer a small sample of the crônicas of Rubem Braga (1913-1990), a Brazilian journalist who is known throughout Brazil for “elevating” the form of the crônica from ephemera to the literary.

The Branch On Which The Blossom Hangs, Thomas Sterling Coffey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Branch on Which the Blossom Hangs is a body of paintings which address the relationship between landscape or physical presence and the primary experiences of emotion and perception. Through this examination of phenomenology and the malleability of the perceptual apparatus, the paintings express my feeling of dislocation caused by a cycle between depression, dissociation, and mental well-being. They question how an individual relates to their environment. The paintings seek to elicit the allusive and embodied qualities of poetry, framing and evoking a broader experience without defining it. By using the recognizable visual language of landscape, abstracted to the point …

Self, Emily Aguayo

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a translation of Dr. Erika Almenara’s complete published collection of poetry. The original publications span a period of over twelve years of work, with books published in 2006, 2008, and 2018. The first book of poetry in this series of translations, Reino Cerrado (Closed Kingdom), explores the profound contemplations of life and how to turn those thoughts into words and put them on paper. We see images of nature, hear faint religious overtones, and feel the distress of a woman searching for a healthy relationship, and having little luck. Para evitar los rastros (To Avoid All Traces), the …

Always On The Clock, Patrick Font

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Always on the Clock is a partial collection of stories centering around the working lives of men and women in Houston, Texas, that explores failed notions of the American Dream. Houston, my hometown, is not perfect by any means, but, given its cultural diversity, I do find it to be the perfect backdrop for the struggles my characters face as they yearn for better versions of themselves, however unattainable their desires may be. This is all to say that Always on the Clock is a satire of American obsessions and culture—work and upward mobility, public education, sex and relationships, parenting, …

For Wintonbury: An Expansion Of Narrative And Painting, Cassaundra Kayla Sanderson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In March 2017, I began planning the narratives of what would become my Thesis Exhibition. One year later marked my installation of the exhibit: For Wintonbury, located at the Fine Art Center Gallery at the University of Arkansas.

A merging of the visual arts and literary fiction, For Wintonbury offers a more immersive experience in storytelling. The painted scenes, drawings, three-dimensional compositions, and short stories each serve their own purposes in presenting partial glimpses into the longer narratives of Wintonbury. Through multiple media and entry points, the viewer is given the choice in which sequence and manner to take in …

Jarfly, Zachary Harrod

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

To look, through poetry, at the men my culture has produced. Formal decisions are unique to each poem which are arranged sonnets, couplets, quatrains, among other forms and free verse forms. Toxic masculinity is examined, as well as the people enabled, participating in, and victimized by that culture.

We're All Girls Here, Suzanne Danielle Monroe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a collection of short stories.

May It Come Easy, Joshua Idaszak

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

May It Come Easy is a collection of stories and a novel excerpt.

A Streetcar Named Kanye West, Frisco Edwards

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This abstract is brought to you by Pogodyne Incorporated, whom you may remember from other narrative disasters such as: Finding Pynchon and that one about Marcella Hamilton with that guy. In this one, Kanye West and his partner Dog the Bounty Hunter find themselves involved in another zany mystery, filled with slapsticks and low-wits. In this powerhouse action adventure, buddy-cop-bonanza, there is no respite from hilarity and political intrigue. With cameos aplenty, a trolley chase, and one very live-wire prop comedian, this thing has got it all, friends. You didn’t ask for it is, but here it is, in all …

The End Of Want, Anthony Blake

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The poems of The End of Want are attuned to the absurdities of modern existence. They take as their jumping-off points the various offbeat occasions that punctuate our lives: over-researched time spent in art museums, Kevin James sitcoms, half-finished cathedrals, and suburban communal living. They catalog the emptiness of what we say to each other and the increasingly disconnected ways we say it. All the while, with dry humor and heart, they search out, and try to hold onto, moments of transcendence amongst corporate language and new definitions of masculinity, and humanity, and holiness.

Ham Radio Operator, Zachary Michael Hester

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ham Radio Operator is a collection of poems.

Translation Of View From The Ossuary By Antoine Volodine, John Thomas Mahany

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a literary translation from the French of Antoine Volodine’s Vue sur l’ossuaire. Additional creative embellishments have been included in the form of translator’s notes and epigraphs in order to enhance the fictive reality of the work.

Insect Light: Stories, Sacha Michael Idell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A collection of short stories. Literary fiction.

Young Punks And Their Bible Adventures: A Collection Of Biblical Fiction Short Stories, Hunter Schmitt

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

These stories are based on the premise that the men who left their lives, families, and jobs behind to follow Jesus were not adults relearning a way to live, but teenagers learning about the world for the first time. The stories will not focus on the miracles we have seen on tv around Easter and Christmas times, nor will they revolve around Jesus. They will give us between-the-scenes views of the apostles in their everyday lives as regular teens.

Soldier's Heart, Thomas Henry Pate Iv

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Soldier’s Heart is a collection of stories about Preston Henry, a Special Forces Operator, doing what he must to survive combat and what he must--a quest just as harrowing-- to find peace back home. The stories of Soldier’s Heart are interwoven in theme and plot, each story dovetailing with the next. It is a collection that shows not all war wounds can be seen.

Why Everything Is A Whole Lot Of Nothing Worth Losing Or Getting Back, David Kinzer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In these three stories, David Kinzer answers the collection’s title with the precision of the hard sciences. In “The Humanist,” the strained relationship between a father and son becomes even more complicated when the son marries. In “Château Royale,” a young woman moves into a new home with a dark history. The final piece, “Starting After Midnight,” follows two young people in the aftermath of a one-night stand. All of everything is inside: Gatling guns and The Birth of Tragedy, Anne Rice and Taco Bell, kit foxes and sex tips. The answer is waiting. All you need to do is …

Future Flowers, Eszter Takacs

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a book-length poem presented in three untitled parts.

Grieve If You Want, Travis Scott Ray

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This collection of short stories is trying to say something about empathy. It’s trying to connect with readers in an effort to convey some small kind of emotion the characters are experiencing. It’s about the difficulty we all have connecting and communicating with each other and ourselves.

The Debt And Other Poems, Kevin Corbett

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A selection of poems, translations, and imitations written from 2009-2015.

What The Fuck Is This?: Aesthetic Nature Of Being Or Ontology In The Poetry Of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alexis Stephenson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“What the Fuck is This?” examines the intersection of phenomenology and poetry arguing for an aesthetic nature of Being and focuses on how we know or experience the world instead of Cartesian absolutes. This subjective knowledge does not compete against objective knowledge but simply recognizes the use that poetic language has for communicating the subjective knowledge from experience of being as it unfolds for us. The major movements of the thesis focus on aesthetic objects, aesthetic intersubjectivity, and the aesthetic self. These are labeled “aesthetic” because a phenomenological methodology reveals a dialectic between that which is unfolding and that which …

Azalea, Kimberly Renee Driggers

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This collection of poems, with its focus on home and absence, is named for the azalea, the thinking of home bush.

The Sorcerer, William Carlisle Goehring

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A collection of poems from 2011-2015.