Creative Writing Commons^™

Picture Postcard, Anthony Fife

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Humanities at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Anthony Fife on December 14, 2007.

The Mother Dust, Elizabeth Oquinn Frazier

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Humanities at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Elizabeth OQuinn Frazier on December 1, 2007.

The Sleepy Hero: Romantic & Spiritual Sleep In The Gawain-Poet, Erin Kathleen Turner Hepner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This thesis examines two accepted styles of writing in the Middle Ages, the romance and religious genres, and what purpose they perform in the Gawain-poet’s religious poem, Patience, and his romance poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK). One recently popular line of research among medieval scholars is examining the way medieval authors, such as the Gawain-poet, combine elements of romance and spiritual writings. By funneling the Gawain-poet’s intermingling of the medieval romance and religious genres through the specific lens of sleep, which is represented differently in medieval romance texts than in medieval religious …

A Post-Marxist Perspective On Chuck Palahniuk’S Early Novels And The Four Plays Of Incarcerated, Ron Riekki

Dissertations

Incarcerated: a collection of four plays includes the plays Home Schooling, Good Behavior, 2 Mics, and All Saints' Day. Incarcerated explores Foucault's carceral networking and Althusser's Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses as exemplified in characters faced with such cataclysmic events as the Holocaust (Home Schooling and All Saints' Day) and the degradation/slavery of the American prison system (Good Behavior and 2 Mics). In this RCG-centered working class playwriting, we see how performativity is in inherent in carceral sociology, where each character in all four plays has to take masks and costumes and roles in order to …

The Biographic And Poetic Dimensions In Gary Synder’S Green Buddhism Poetry: Cold Mountain, Mountains And Rivers Without End, And Danger On Peaks, Byoungkook Park

Dissertations

From the perspective of ecology, many scholars have examined works of Gary Synder, who is an environmental activist, a peasant-Buddhist, and one of the most beloved and significant poets in the East and West. While his poems have been widely read, they have been rarely articulated from the perspective of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism or, which I would call, Green Buddhism. Considering this, my dissertation focuses on Snyder's Green Buddhism poetry and delineates the concept of Green Buddhism and how it has emerged in his Green Buddhism poetry over the past fifty years. According to my research, his poetic dimensions …

Swimming Lessons, Kathy Cole

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis explores different perspectives through the eyes of adults and children and how those perspectives are formed by their relationships with the people around them.” It tries to focus on characters who are struggling to survive by realizing their own value. Whether they are surviving illness, death, abandonment, or midnight car rides with drunken parents, each of these characters tries to make sense of their world and how they fit into it.”

Ordinary Mermaids And Other Stories, Desiree Sholes

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis is a series of short stories in which the characters are constantly searching for something. The characters learn, grow, and adapt as they experience different life situations and work to find some new meaning for their lives, even if the change is small or subtle.

Practical Pieces And Other Stories, Rebecca Lynn Haigh

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis is a collection of short stories in which characters look back at the past, at truths they’ve learned and failures they’ve experienced, and look to the future for opportunities to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones. The idea of home plays a vital role in making decisions as to how to move on into a better future.

Four Roads: A Novel, Kelly Daniels

Dissertations

An American tourist is attacked by peasants, who suspect her of stealing infants to sell on a shadowy organ donation market. Several other attacks follow, prompting a travel advisory, which in turn causes tourists to flee the country, fracturing the already weak economy, and creating more chaos still. Meanwhile, death squads patrol the mountains to "disappear" anyone suspected of harboring sympathy for the rebels, and the usual assortment of criminals use any means available to make a buck. This is Guatemala, hardly a vacationer's paradise; yet several Americans have elected to remain in country amidst such turmoil.

Four Roads, a …

Yankee, Go Home!: Translations And Poems With Critical Introduction, Devin Jay Hepner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

This paper attempts to outline the various influences and similarities of my poetry to other poets and poetry of the twentieth-century. The critical introduction will cover those influences and the research I have done on the poets. It also contains individual poems that I feel have a connection with my own poetry and poetic translation. After the critical introduction, I include my poetry in stylistic order followed by Russian translations in chronological order. I will first describe how I came to write and read poetry and its value for me.

Out Here, Listening, Amy Whipple

Theses & Honors Papers

This thesis is a collection of creative nonfiction essays revolving around the author’s place and identity within her community, especially where her womanhood is concerned. Within eight different essays, she questions and analyzes what community and individualism are and how they fit together to form a unique sense of self.

The High School Play, Kevin Drzakowski

Dissertations

The High School Play is a creative work, a full-length play in three acts. Set in suburban Richard M. Nixon High School, the play explores the notion o f adolescent identity while satirizing the American educational system’s artificial construction o f these identities. The play is especially concerned with theatrically representing the way students view each other through flawed frameworks based on preconceived notions o f race, gender, sexuality, and intelligence, as well as how this behavior shapes adolescents’ construction o f their own self-conceptions. The High School Play also deals with the difficulty schools experience in addressing the increasingly …

The Lotus Flower, Julie Gerdes

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

The Social Construction Of Authorship: An Investigation Of Subjectivity And Rhetorical Authority In The College Writing Classroom, Johannah Rodgers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although we use the term author on a daily basis to refer to certain individuals, bodies of work, and systems of ideas, as Michel Foucault and other critics have pointed out, attempting to answer the question “What is an Author?” is by no means a simple proposition. And, starting from the position that there is no single, or definitive answer to this complex question, this dissertation seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the genealogy of authorship by investigating the ways in which conceptions of the author have informed models of the writing subject in the field of rhetoric …

"In The Drowning City" And Other Stories, Malyn Matilde Segarra

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the Drowning City and Other Stories is a collection of fiction written and revised during Malyn Segarra's graduate studies at the University of Central Florida. Most of the collection examines the transient nature and fragility of identity and shifting roles within the family unit. All focus on a particular span of time, the transition into young adulthood. Each character is faced with an obstacle or event that tests his or her beliefs, integrity and sense of self. As each one struggles to make a unique and permanent impression in the world, he or she must come to terms with …

Broken Open, Taylor Kistler Stannard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Broken Open is a collection of short stories, four of which deal with culpability and the unexpected transformations that occur when blame, either unintended or deliberately invoked, is exposed and finally understood. The remaining two stories concern relationships that turn out to be gifts, as well as painful learning experiences. In "Other Living Creatures," one family contends with post traumatic stress disorder as another implodes following the death of a young soldier in Vietnam. "Hunters" deals with the unconscious motivations that leave a father resentful and unable to forge a relationship with his son. In "Bardenbrook," an accidental death is …

Fractures, Elizabeth Hastings

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A stoplight at night. A dim bedroom. The smell of smoke and loss in summer. In winter, the crackle of snow underfoot, the city cold as a lavender planet. These are the settings within Fractures, and it is to these backdrops that the conflicts of the poems' speakers bare themselves. In the glow of these places, the truth of fractures, the gaps and slivers within us all, are illuminated. Below the visible wholeness of life lies a masked truth, the truth of a world that exists as a collection of fragments, of lives, of stories that connect, intersect, and sometimes …

Frat Star, Nathan Andrew Holic

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, a social novel in the tradition of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is all at once an attentive first-person study of a twenty-something man close to his cracking point in his first post-college job, a detailed expose of national fraternities, and the sweeping panoramic view of an entire generation of over-programmed college students searching for direction. Frat Star follows a fragile college graduate named Charles Washington, who takes a position as an "Educational Consultant" with a national fraternity in his first semester after graduation. For sixteen …

Tourist Trap: On Being Raised In Award-Winning Sand, Catherine Jane Carson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The literary essays in this collection explore the relationships between mind, body, and environment as the narrator explores Orlando, her beachfront hometown of Sarasota, and other "tourist traps." The traditional and experimental essays here question how residents make popular vacation destinations their own and how much trust one can put in strangers, neighbors, city planners, theme-park designers, and lovers. Dance floors, hybrid bikes, flying elephants, swing sets, and swimming pools fill these pages. Worries spiral like disco lights on dance floors, and cultural forces press down with the constant pressure of pedal strokes. With the embodiment of place comes connection …

Moonflowers And Other Stories, Sarah Bethany Prevatt-Harris

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Moonflowers and Other Stories is a collection of short stories focusing on complex relationships among characters who are estranged from their families and their pasts; some seek to reestablish connections, while others decide to simply walk away. All of the stories are set in Florida. In "Stained Glass," Abby returns home after seventeen years to help care for the father who disowned her. In "Blue Green Red," Melaney is compelled to find her brother after years of lying about his existence. Selina, the protagonist of "Fatty Walsh" is so embarrassed by her family she will not tell her friend Alucia …

Two Blades Come Together: Stories, Mark Edward Pursell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection of seven short stories details the emotional triumphs and complications of characters whose lives are altered by issues of sexuality and disconnection. An adolescent girl feels her father slipping away from her and, in turn, willfully destroys the imaginary world of the boy she babysits; a speech therapist struggles to make headway with a young patient while finding himself unable to communicate with his ex-lover; a gay poet cheats on his boyfriend in a desperate attempt to fuel his failing art. The dramatis personae of Two Blades Come Together is comprised of individuals who struggle towards grace and …

In Search Of: Stories From The Ones Left Behind, Mayra Lizzette Velez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In Search Of: Stories from the Ones Left Behind introduces five young women-- June, Leila, Kiss, Marianne, and Alma-- who struggle to impede loved ones from abandoning them. One woman confronts her worst fears when she finds out about her husband's affair with a mutual friend; one comes to terms with her sister's poor lifestyle choices; another copes with her mother's sudden marriage; and yet another figures out that in order to keep her fiance, she must be willing to take on responsibilities foreign to her. And then there is the story of Alma, a contemplative but naive seventeen-year-old girl …

Journey To The Scars: A White Trash Epic, J. Patrick Rader

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Inspired by the work of writers Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe and motivated by celebrity prevaricator James Frey, Journey to the Scars: A White Trash Epic is a memoir that attempts to redefine the genre by applying the ideals and themes of gonzo and new journalism. The opening chapter, "The Diary of John Doe Frankenstein" tells the story of a pivotal event in the author's life. Immediately following this narrative of a near fatal motorcycle accident, the author/narrator's reliability is called into question and the remainder of the memoir is the story of the author's efforts to uncover the …

Let The Children Come To Me, Andrea Ramirez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis, a collection of personal essays, explores my parents' affinity towards their native Colombia and how this connection to their homeland, through their faith and their customs, affected my definition of self. When I think about my parents' emigration from Colombia to the States, I picture the illustrations in the Bible I had as a child: the couple running from Sodom and Gomorra, running away from the place they had always known and holding on to each other. My parents, like the couple in the Bible, were in the middle of nowhere when they first set foot on the …

How The Sky Tastes: Eight Stories, Daniel Sinclair

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How the Sky Tastes is not simply a collection of stories. It is my representation of moments in life, social commentaries, bits of humor, and pure entertainment all in one. Each story, although unique and easily able to stand alone, shares qualities I find important in writing fiction. First, each story features realistically flawed, yet sympathetic characters dealing with difficulties in life. Secondly, the actual moment is important in each story--whether that moment is something shared between two or more characters or simply the time a certain character comes to a serious realization. Finally, the style can make or break …

The Round Barn, Susan Elizabeth Fallows

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Round Barn is a novel in two parts that tells the story of two Iowa farm families during the period 1915 to 1929, a volatile time in the history of the American farm. The first part of the novel tells the story of Joe Marshall, a young man in conflict with his hard-working farmer father. At sixteen-years-old, Joe must choose whether to leave the farm to pursue his own desires or to stay where he is needed to help keep his financially strapped family afloat. Part two of the novel focuses on Mae Allinson, a woman in her early …

The Double Sunrise : A Novel And An Accompanying Exegesis, Australian National Identity And The Double Sunrise, Lynne Leonhardt

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis comprises a historical novel entitled 'The Double Sunrise' and an exegesis entitled 'Australian National Identity and "The Double Sunrise'". The novel contains three books. The narrative starts in Book I through the perspective of twelve-year-old, fatherless Virginia. The introductory scene, set in 1957, depicts the girl's consciousness and self-consciousness at the wedding of her mother, Valerie, a former English war-bride and war-widow, to her second husband Noel. When the newly married couple leave for their honeymoon, Virginia is left in the care of her aunt, Attie, (her father's twin sister) who lives on a farm in the south …

My Sister's Tears, Erika Dawn Whitfield

Theses

One of the most influential writers I studied in the Advanced Creative Writing cluster was Amiri Baraka. His style of writing distinguishes him from his peers. but the journey he took to get the caliber of writing he's at now excites me as a writer. From the Beat Period (1957-1962). The Transitional Period ( 1963-1965). The Black Nationalist Period (1965-1974). to the Third World Marxist Period (1974- ) (Beat Reader) Each period signified growth in his writing. but his way of thinking changed. He grew as a person. His transitions as a writer forced me to examine my own. My …

See You Soon: An E-Memoir, Leigh C. Kolb

Theses

This thesis is a creative nonfiction piece, which uses e-mails between two people to create its text. It is in an epistolary style, which historically is a style in which letters, diary entries or newspaper clippings are used to construct a story. Epistolary (which comes from the word "epistle," or letter) novels often are used to show a developing relationship between people, which is precisely what the proceeding piece, See You Soon, aims to do.

The following document is constructed out of thousands of e-mails between the author and her now-husband. The e-mails were weeded through and woven together to …

Short Story Collection: Final Project, Aisha S. Abram

Theses

This collection of six short stories all center their plots on the actions and responses of a strong female character. I took this approach because I feel there are too few female characters in the world of fiction.

In the story ''Angie" a young girl befriends a strange man Living under the family's house. The story focuses on her mother's fear and ultimately her acceptance of this odd friend.

The story of "Chelsea'' centers on the decision that Chelsea, a common waitress, must make to change her situation. In the story she meets a trucker who is like many of …