Creative Writing Commons^™

Paul Celan And The Processes Of Survival In Post-Shoah Jewish Writing, Ari Savage

Theses

The following is a study of the poetry of Paul Celan as a representation of psychological and social processes present in the written works of Shoah survivors. It begins with an analysis of the place of writing in Jewish culture, then identifies three primary processes which operate in sequence: alienation, individuation, and integration. By examining Paul Celan’s highly personal and autobiographical texts in the context of his life experience as a Shoah survivor it is possible to discern the social and psychological forces at work which compel survivors to express their traumas in written form, and to gain a better …

The Black Garden, Madalene Klocke

Theses

“The Black Garden” is a novel-length fantasy fiction work. It follows the narrative of Ryan, an 18-year-old girl, who has great expectations for what her first year at university will hold. Her entire world view is tilted when she attends a party with her new roommate, Blair, and wakes up in an unfamiliar place. Ryan must fight to keep her sanity as she is thrust into the world of faeries, witches, and far worse creatures than she could have ever imagined: including her parents.

I Have News To Tell You, Jeanne M. Allison

Theses

I Have News To Tell You is a poetry collection that reckons with grief, survival, and mortality through the exploration of harrowing life experiences and contemplation through nature and relationships. The collection contends with what it means to be a human shaped by scars.

The Fourth Wall, Serenity Dougherty

Theses

“The Fourth Wall” is the beginning of a fiction novel set in the comedy scene in Lincoln, NE during the #MeToo movement. The story follows a young female comedian in the scene, Kara, from the perspectives of several significant people in her life. Though the novel never inhabits Kara’s perspective directly, it seeks to give readers an intimate look at the difficulty she faces as she tries to navigate the male-dominated world of stand-up comedy during a time when the community is being forced to confront its troubling history of sweeping reports of sexual violence under the rug.

Tiny Furious Circles, Ann M. Herrington

Theses

I have had time to live and time to reflect on that living. What I have found is that certain things present themselves, over and over, wearing different skins. And though they look different, there is a certain whiff of familiarity that activates the soul’s hindbrain and pulls you close. That’s how it has been for me. Because of this — my failure to learn the first time; my need to see a thing from all its sides; my constant picking at the half-healed — certain themes repeat. And because they have come to me at different times in many …

Flightless, Danielle Gorin

Theses

The stories in this collection occupy a range of genres: realist literary fiction, slice of life, horror, magical realism/fabulism. While most of the pieces are short fiction, there is one short short, and one flash piece. What unites these disparate styles and forms is a concern with the everyday, with family dramas. Flightless is interested in exploring the dynamics of different familial relationships, particularly that of mothers and their children. These relationships, even good ones, can be fraught with expectations, guilt, and feelings of obligation unique to the expected roles of mothers and children, and my stories seek to investigate …

Groundless, Niara Jackson

Theses

Groundless is a collection of realist short stories that follow original characters as they move into a new understanding of themselves. They may think they are grounded in who they are, but each character learns new things that often contradict what they think they know about themselves. As with anyone, it is important that these characters re-examine who they think they are and look outward – what has made them that way? Is their perception accurate? Are they being fair to themselves and those around them? New understandings of what they believe about themselves and about their world are always …

Leper/Cat, Bryan Halvarsson

Theses

This novella is about an artist stricken with leprosy who has to spend the rest of his living days on a mountainside with a particularly large cat.

What The Water Brought Me: A Composite Of Two Short Stories And A Novel Portion, Shannon Strawhun

Theses

This thesis is a collection of two short stories and three chapters from my novel, Shore Walkers. The short stories, “Lights Against Your Back” and “Thunder and Dust” are a part of a larger collection I have been working on. Each story is based on a different being or place from Gulliver’s Travels. Though the stories can be read separately, there are characters and settings which eventually link all the works in the collection. The stories follow characters in different places and time in the United States. “Thunder and Dust” centers around the dismantling of the Hearst Castle in the …

Try To Remember Breath, Rita Chapman

Theses

A collection of original poems.

Gone To Ground, Brian Blair

Theses

Gone to Ground is a collection of short stories that explores the possibilities beyond the edge of the everyday. They are an attempt to peek beyond the imaginary boundaries we erect for ourselves in the name of danger or the unknown. Each story is an opportunity to see our own familiar humanity in others, no matter the accidents of fortune that separate us. Though the stories in Gone to Ground often touch the surreal or the magical, they are firmly rooted in what could be out there, on the other side of our walls, whether real or imagined. These are …

For That What Didn't, Sue Britt

Theses

ABSTRACT The work of this book was pursued with the objective of exploring psychological and sociological causes and effects of the human condition with themes including family, love, solitude, loss, abandonment, estrangement, maternity, sex, and gender power dynamics--especially that of male dominance of women and varying female responses to this sociological organization--using characters, animals, settings and voices in the artistic medium of poetry. The assembly of the book is in the style of novel structure, but neither story nor chronology were considered in the order of organization as each poem is an independent piece. Epigraphs were used at the beginning …

Second Safest City In America, Liam Cassidy

Theses

Second Safest City in America is a collection of short fiction set in Midwestern cities and suburbs, as well as the Gulf Coast. These stories explore the untethered expectations, broken promises, and absurdity of American life. The characters are violent, funny, emotionally unstable, politically wrong-minded, and compassionate. They implore empathy or actively avoid the pain of others. They search out security or take matters into their own hands. They sacrifice and they seek revenge. They are not outliers in this country. They are part of the mainstream weirdness that permeates everything.

Xaminer, Terry Artis

Theses

“Rocket” Rowan Bell is a young Black idealist who has an audacious notion to disseminate what he perceives as truth to his community through news publication. As an adolescent boy, he was a good kid and athlete with a good heart from a poor Black neighborhood. Rocket experienced what seemed to be an episode of sexual assault by a youth-minister/track-coach at his church. The ordeal may have shaped his young adult perspective and evolved into a philosophy through which Rocket contends:There are three Negro (P)s that perpetuate the pathetic plight of Black people — the Negro Preacher, the Negro …

Muscle & Bone, Dusty R. Freund

Theses

“Touch” is a short story set in the U.S., present day. Two young girls simultaneously explore the nature of their relationship while performing sexual acts for an online audience. The story investigates how female identity is defined through sexuality and how that affects interpersonal relationships.

“Muscle & Bone” is the beginning of a novel set in a fictional, rural town called Carrington in Southern Missouri. The story takes place on two timelines: one set in 1950, and the other in 1895. A teenage girl named Caroline is sexually assaulted, and as a result impregnated, and forced to marry her assaulter. …

Where They Wander, Kevin T. Gleich

Theses

The stories contained within are all concerned in one way or another with our memory. More specifically, what it means to remember something. With a fictional drug, referred to only as “serum,” the characters in these stories all fall victim to what can be described as an overdose of experience. Our memories are what allow us to develop ideology, our concept of self, and intimacy with others. Each story in “Where They Wander” deals in some way with these basic human traits by exaggerating the characters’ abilities to confront their experiences.

There is another thread that pulls these stories together. …

Frida's Daughter, Myrta Vida

Theses

The purpose of my creative writing is to highlight a group of U.S. citizens still woefully underrepresented in literature proper: the Latinx middle class. I’m keenly interested in exploring Puerto Rican and first- and second-generation Latinx immigrant stories. Even though some of the experiences from these groups have been elegantly visited by writers such as Giannina Braschi, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Julia Alvarez, and others, there are nuances to the Latinx middle class experience that are yet to be uncovered. Being stuck in the cultural, linguistic, socio-economic, and political middles in a country that has recently taken a largely nationalist …

Damar On Fridays, Maja Sadikovic

Theses

Abstract

These poems are about the first hand witnessing of the Balkan war and its visceral repercussions, ripping of families across generations and continents due to religious intolerance, and an identity crisis within the diaspora of the former Yugoslav people. They interact with appeals of loss, in terms of bodies, memory, and material, despair within the identity of the self in and outside of religion, and the perception of love and belonging, but not necessarily in that order. They are largely inspired by victim story-telling, translations of conversations with natives of the former Yugoslavia and their children, and ramifications of …

Humberto: The Fire Next Time, John David Fournie

Theses

“The Fire Next Time” is the opening section of a novel, Humberto, that tells the story of a group of people working at a biomedical engineering firm in St. Louis. The section follows Charles, a well-respected employee and leader whose marriage is slowly disintegrating. In the first chapter, a larger-than-life employee, the Priest, joins the company. He befriends Charles while working closely with him. The Priest, however, begins an affair with Charles’ wife, Linda. Charles is put in a difficult position: how should he work with a man he both hates and admires? As Charles struggles with this dilemma, a …

Poetry And Prose: The Story And The Slant, Carol Arnett

Theses

Not available.

Moments Of Connection, Kimberly Knaust

Theses

Moments of Connection explores author Kimberly Knaust's relationship with literature, her sense of the world 's beauty and strangeness, and her certainty that identity is an ever changing thing, never stagnant or limited but something which sheds the unnecessary and blossoms with every moment of choice.

Anti-Nostalgic is a novella in which the amnesiac protagonist Ariel struggles against both her own martial impulses and the ruined world in which she awakens. In a dystopian future, one in which the environment has collapsed and there is a shortage of potable water, Ariel chooses sides in the battle for control of the …

Eternal Note Of Sadness, Pyra Intihar

Theses

This collection of poems and short stories is an attempt to answer what Matthew Arnold calls "the eternal note of sadness." The thesis contains poems, two short stories, and one personal narrative. While each of these can be read with different interpretive slants, I choose here to show how each work in this collection is a response to the eternal note of sadness. The poems and personal narrative in the first part of this collection are concerned with the writer's quest, and l will go into depth discussing each of these poems and the narrative because I think they directly …

Beginnings, Ending And The Path Between, Daran Kappauff

Theses

This collection of flash fiction stories focuses on the idea that, if left unchecked, the world we live and work in can not only have dramatic effects on the way we live our lives, but also on our personality and type of person we may become. It also looks at how an individual 's personal life often parallels their professional life. And lastly, it stands as a shining testament to the notion that reality is often stranger than fiction.

All of the characters and almost all of the situations and stories presented here are based true events. What little fiction …

Petals And Mortar, Amanda Rose Bramley

Theses

The stories in this collection focus on the little, almost insignificant symbols that appear in our daily lives. People, in general, don't notice how certain objects gravitate toward us. The symbols in my life and in my writing appear in places and forms unexpected: a bird outside of a windowsill, flowers that grow by themselves in our backyards, a scarf purchased at a discount store, domino tiles in a common game. How easy it is to take pieces of our lives for granted. They can, for many, hold an almost transcendental power. They provide landmarks for the steps we choose …

My Family, My Open, Deborah A. Herzog

Theses

This collection of poems and non-fiction work focuses on self-reflection and family with all its perfections and imperfections. I believe this collection mirrors the essence of the writer and gives insight to the loved ones who shaped that life. It is a tapestry of emotional revelation derived from introspection and observation of the world.

The author has experienced the joy of reading for over forty years and spent many hours journaling throughout her life. The empty nest syndrome was the catalyst to pursue studies in creative writing. It became a cathartic exploration of life that blossomed into a work that …

Why Moms Drink, Anne Freeman

Theses

The personal narratives and poems contained within this thesis explore one of the most primal and powerful relationships in the human experience, that of a parent and child. As a mother of a young boy, I have found, and continue to find my greatest strength, so1Tow, and inspiration in watching him grow.

The collection as a whole does tell a complete story, although not necessarily a chronological one. It is strongly influenced by the creative nonfiction work of David Sedaris. Like Sedaris, these essays portray everyday family relationships, often in less-than- flattering ways. In a similar style, these essays do …

Upon Wakening, Joan M. Lovelace

Theses

Upon awakening is a memoir essay that details the free fall from my prime into the disease of addiction, which took everything from me but the one thing I willingly would have given: my life. Instead, alcoholism dragged me on a horrifying public journey that began in a secret place in my mind.

At first, only I knew the trouble I was in, as I began drinking from the liquor bottles in the wet bar of our home. As my craving for booze grew beyond my control, I lost my career as a television journalist, my self-respect, my dignity and …

The Understudy, Linda Denise Harris

Theses

This story is a first person true account of love and loss between two sisters. The sisters are separated by seven years and other siblings, yet the bond formed in childhood is strengthened through the trials and tribulations of life. When the older sibling learns that she has terminal cancer she wants her sister by her side.

From the perspective of the younger sister, the story weaves from past to present, back and forth, as each substantial scene unfolds. Through her eyes, the younger sibling sheds light on the early years and the reader learns what it was like growing …

Parental Absence, Benjamin Brainsby

Theses

The two short stories presented herein feature wildly different narratives operating under a common thematic umbrella; absent fathers.

While not always the central focus of the narrative, or the principle motivation of the protagonists, the fathers' absence in both stories casts a long shadow that defines their sense of happiness. Characters in both_ stories suffer from a feeling of incompleteness that is rooted in the longing for the absent father.

1n both cases the father's absence is beyond the protagonist's control and as such they must react to the affect it has on their lives and the situations that it, …

Through Windows, Sarah E. Jones

Theses

This short story collection focuses on the female perspective and expectations based on a host of influences: familial, cultural, and mythical. Even in extraordinary circumstances decisions are made about how to lives one's life. The collection explores the context in which women put their life experiences and personal relationships, and the space needed to consider these things. Readers familiar with Lorrie Moore's short fiction may find echoes of her solitary souls in these stories.