Creative Writing Commons^™

The Moth Effect, Kylie Smith

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This thesis is the start of what I envision to be a full-length memoir. I address multiple themes, specifically family and generational trauma and mental illness. I explore these themes non-linearly, through personal narrative, scientific research, and scene recreations. I begin with an introduction and then move into an essay that explores my experience meeting my estranged sister from the first time. Throughout the essay, I move in and out of this meeting, weaving the encounter together with my own struggles with mental health, research about the Peppered moth species, and scene recreations from the lives of other women in …

Secondson, Jonathan Blake Heaton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This author’s introduction is an analysis of graphic literature and poetry, and the combining of the two to create graphic poetry. Themes are explored of what it means to be a second son in a world permeated by traditional values, regarding the prominence of the first son.

This thesis was split into five sections: Finding My Story—in which the author explains how he came to the main narrative content behind Secondson; Finding My Themes—in which the author discusses the four themes that are included in Secondson and the inspiration received from outside works of poetry; Finding My Genre—in which the …