Creative Writing Commons^™

Catching Smoke, Megan Duffey

Creative Nonfiction MFA Theses

"Catching Smoke" is a creative nonfiction essay collection that focuses on living in the south and the hardships associated with matters of poverty, addiction, incarceration, and family cycles. This collection ponders all the ways that the concept of smoke affected my family's life and gives multiple meanings to the phrase and title "Catching Smoke." Artifacts (pictures, letters, etc.) are used throughout to express a family narrative concerned with keeping a record, destroying family secrets, and examining the "shadows" of truth.

The Things We Tell Each Other, Aj Lapierre

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The Things We Tell Each Other is a memoir about a young woman trying to figure out what happened to her as a baby and the truth behind all the secrets. There are different perspectives from different family members explaining what happened to her, but every perspective is a different story and the doctors don't have the real answer. Will she be able to find the truth or will she find her own truth?

Conceptualizing The Unspeakable: A Conceptual Metaphor Theory Analysis Of Sexual Assault Trauma In Creative Nonfiction, Ariana Ciamaricone

West Chester University Master’s Theses

This paper explores the use of conceptual metaphors (CMs) in two works of creative nonfiction, namely Laurie Halse Anderson’s (2019) Shout and Elissa Washuta’s (2014) My Body is a Book of Rules. Anderson’s (2019) poetic memoir centers on her experiences with sexual assault throughout her childhood and the process of writing her young adult novel Speak (1999). Washuta (2014) writes on her experiences with rape and mental illness via prose. Both memoirs detail their authors’ reckoning with the experience of sexual assault, and this paper investigates how trauma narratives attempt to “resolve what cannot be resolved, to generate meaning, …

Shadow Smoke: A Nonfiction Collection On Memories Lost, Taken, And Storied, Sarah Ann Canterbury

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Shadow Smoke investigates the neuroscientific nature of memory and memory’s role/ authority in creative nonfiction as an illustration of how the genre lays the process of memory bare and accurately models the mind’s process of memory. The scholarship as well as body of creative works revolve around the understanding and tension of memory being a creative process which is explored through genre discussions, neuroscientific studies, and individual creative works. Shadow Smoke consists of four braided nonfiction essays and five nonfiction vignettes to form a collection on memories lost, taken, and storied framed by a critically researched introduction assessing the collection’s …

I Didn't Know You Had A Daughter, Jennifer L. Nickle

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

I have heard it said that one of the hardest genres to write is the memoir. It is definitely the most emotionally and physically draining writing I have ever done. Reliving traumatic events and finding the right balance between accuracy and forgiveness is an exercise in mental contortions. There have been many days where I felt like the world’s most impossible necklace knot by the end of writing a single page.

By completing this memoir, I am untangling a knot and freeing my true self. I'm sharing my story. It is not a story of trauma and child abuse, even …

Let Me Be Myself, Brandon Stettenbenz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Let Me Be Myself is a collection of short stories, essays, oral history, and poems that deals with generational trauma, history, traveling, family, war, oppression, and healing. This project serves to inform, evoke understanding, lend perspective, and inspire others. It aims to help others understand the trauma of being born from a Holocaust surviving family, and its impact on somebody in modern day society. It explores the story of a first, second, and third generation Holocaust refugee. It connects a timeline of eighty years of trauma through violence and oppression, and a pursuit to find healing from Nazi Germany.

The Superhero Inside: Exploring The Minds Of Ourselves And Our Superheroes, Briana Craig

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Superhero Inside is a research-based, non-fiction novel that connects elements of psychology to the concept of superheroes. There are seven chapters that explore a range of topics, including why we are fascinated by villainous characters and how superheroes represent (or misrepresent) diverse groups of people.

The Immortal Jellyfish And Other Things That Don't Know About Love, Tianli Kilpatrick

All NMU Master's Theses

My thesis is a collection of creative nonfiction essays that play with form and language in an attempt to show that trauma can create beauty. This thesis originated with trauma theory and specifically deals with sexual assault trauma, but it also covers topics including international adoption, self-injury, and oceanic life. Jellyfish are a recurring image and theme, both the physical jellyfish itself and the mythological connection to Medusa. Jellyfish do not have brains, but they have developed complex stinging tentacles that for all their beauty make them dangerous. I chose jellyfish because their dual representation fascinates me. I think they …

A Moment Became The Season: An Exploration Of Trauma Narrative Within The Community Development Context, Lydia Berry

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

This research explores current methods of psychological trauma intervention within the community development context, namely the understandings that bound the clinical and diagnostic side of trauma, and the more recent victim centered approach: the trauma informed care method. The shortcomings of these approaches is that they individually lack the ability to establish the victim back into their sense of self or community, accordingly. This research argues that a narrative approach, a process by which a survivor of trauma has full agency to express their experience, used in conjunction with existing practices can rectify the shortcomings of both methods. The researcher …

In Post Memoriam: An Exploration Of Family And Grieving, Courtney A. Mauck

All NMU Master's Theses

This collection of essays, poems, and fiction details the author’s exploration of familial trauma and grief. The author wrestles with the concept of “postmemory” as theorized by Marianne Hirsch and questions what it means to have the experiences of someone else passed down through generations. The collection includes essays on the connection between eggs and ovarian cancer, the exploration of animal magnetism, as well as a fictional recreation of a familial story. By braiding several forms of writing together, the work aims to create an interwoven narrative that questions the very concept of memory.

A Theory Of Veteran Identity, Travis L. Martin

Theses and Dissertations--English

More than 2.6 million troops have deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, surveys reveal that more than half feel “disconnected” from their civilian counterparts, and this feeling persists despite ongoing efforts, in the academy and elsewhere, to help returning veterans overcome physical and mental wounds, seek an education, and find meaningful ways to contribute to society after taking off the uniform. This dissertation argues that Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans struggle with reassimilation because they lack healthy, complete models of veteran identity to draw upon in their postwar lives, a problem they’re working through collectively …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …