Creative Writing Commons^™

Chickens In Texas: A Farce In One Act, Lawson Marchetti

Honors Theses

Herein lies a one-act farce written by Lawson David Marchetti, an English major in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at the University of Mississippi. His emphasis is in Creative Writing, and his minors are in Theatre Arts and in Music. This farce was written as his senior thesis, for the completion of requirements of the Honors College. The play was conceived in August of 2020, and completed in April of 2021. The play itself is set in modern times, sans pandemic, and is highly whimsical in style. It requires a cast of twelve comedic actors, and several complicated technical …

Josue, Eraldo Enrico Chiecchi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A 14-year-old El Paso boy is in the prime of his life by all appearances. He is surrounded by a close group of friends, a family that loves him and had aspirations of joining the military once he graduated from high school.

But to everyone's shock, he walked up an Interstate 10 overpass and leaped to his death.

We tell his story and his family's as they deal with his unexpected death.

Big Nothing: A Story About Bicycles And The Girls Who Ride Them In The Heart Of West Texas, Keziah Staska

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Their one-way road trip had started the day before when they left their home in San Bernardino for the final time. Paisley was afraid of moving away from the city she grew up in, but not for the same reasons many children her age would be. . So, her social life wasn’t her primary concern when it came time to abandon her home. Instead, she was afraid to leave San Bernardino because she had memorized all the perfect bike routes within a thirty-mile radius. On the other, the fear that their new home would have insufficient routes and roads compared …

It Must Have Been Your Eyes, Christian Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

This fiction book entails the story of a Mexican orphan girl, Mariana, who is propelled on to a journey to the U.S. along with her mysterious ability to see the future in people’s eyes. Her plight lands her on a shelter for unaccompanied immigrant children in Texas where she is forced to confront her fears and grow. In this surreal story that is based on true events, our times are reflected and even our future

To Love The Birds And The Places They’Ve Made Their Home: Poems From The Magic Valley, Alyssa B. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The theme of the collection could be summed up in these lines written by Caryll Houselander in The Reed of God, “body and soul together give glory to God: the sharper the capacity for sorrow and joy, the greater the hallowing...Christ laid hold of the world with His human hands...He wed Himself to it. Our life is the response of the bride” (66–67). Our loving connection to every human person is our loving connection to Christ—charity is our bride-ness. The poems follow one bride through her journey, with the author’s environment (the Rio Grande Valley) coloring the verses, as …

The Roxy Letters, Mary Pauline Lowry

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Roxy Letters is a comedic written in letters from Roxy—an undersexed, underemployed, well-educated, and verbose twenty-something working at the deli of the flagship Whole Foods in Austin, TX—to her ex-boyfriend Everett who is living with her, but is failing to pay rent while succeeding in totally ruining her mojo!

As Roxy struggles to raise herself from her artistic, romantic, and employment slumps, she finds a new best friend in Artemis, who is a burlesque dancing, girl goddess, and huntress of men. Roxy battles with the meth heads who live next door; reluctantly tries out a sex cult focused on …

Keeping Austin, Kevin B. Anderson

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

n/a

We Make Our Own Heaven Here, Allyson Whipple

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The poems in We Make Our Own Heaven Here are grouped around a series of artistic and intellectual concerns. The opening section of We Make Our Own Heaven Here covers a wide range of distances, as well as a number of topics, but ultimately, the pieces are grounded in the variegated landscape of Texas. In terms of subject matter, these are poems of ambivalence and tension. In these pieces, the speaker comes up against the beauty of the natural world, but also the danger within it. The poems in the second section of We Make Our Own Heaven Here engage …

Easy Hearts: A Novel, Andrew J. Olsen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Easy Hearts is a novel set in contemporary Texas. Justin Borchard, just paroled after three and-a-half years in prison, returns to his hometown in East Texas where his wife, Melinda, has been tending bar at the Shortleaf Inn. After Melinda confesses to a brief affair with a local oil executive named Waylon Goodwin, an affair she has ended, and facing limited prospects in their hometown, Melinda and Justin make the hard choice to accept a proposition from Waylon: they will leave home for Hearts County, a desolate swatch of hardpan in the Permian Basin of West Texas, where Waylon has …

El Momento En Que..., Donna Lynn Munoz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

We’ve all experienced moments that move us in some way, moments that we’ve memorized for the rest of our lives. Some we can’t ever forget, and some we wish we could. Nonetheless, these moments are ingrained in the forever of our minds. My collection, El Momento En Que… is a compilation of snapshots of the life of a fictional character named Graciela, who is fourteen and has experienced the tremendous loss of family, sense of place, and sense of self. It is a collage of moments where she questions her life, her parents’ decisions, her relationships with those around her, …

On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Lars Eighner became homeless in 1988 after leaving a job he had held for ten years as an attendant at a state hospital in Austin, Texas. He lives in a small apartment in Austin and continues to scavenge. This article was originally published in the Fall 1990 issue of The Threepenny Review. Reprinted with permission.

This article originally appeared in a 1992 issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy (Volume 8, Issue 1): http://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol8/iss1.

Mariguano, Juan Ochoa

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Mariguano is a fictional account of a young man growing up in a family in whose patriarch is a Mexican drug lord. The narrator, el Johnny, and his father, Don Julio, crisscross through Mexico with total disregard for distance or time bribing comandantes and stopping turf wars all in preparation for their next score. The novel culminates in Don Julio’s attempt to fix the 1988 Presidential election in Mexico. Don Julio’s son, El Johnny, lives to tell the tale of the rise and fall of his father’s drug smuggling empire and of the destruction of his family. The events in …

El Huisache Es Pocho, Pero Las Raíces No: Poems, Isaac Chavarria

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

This project is a collection of pocho poetry. The poems in my collection emphasize my identity as pocho. The term “pocho” is often used as a derogatory term describing a Mexican American who has lost the ability to speak Spanish. I recontextualize the border pocho as an occupant of two nationalities, as well as several social classes. Along with poets who identify themselves as Chicano/a, I am inspired by family and acquaintances who self identify as Chicano/a, Hispanic, Mexican American, or Mexican. I believe the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas is a unique enclave influenced by its people, landscape, …

Toby, Hannah Holmes

Scope

No abstract provided.

Ball And Chain, Eloise Holland

LSU Master's Theses

Ball and Chain is a coming-of-age story that explores the pain and joy of an unusual first love. Patsy is a twenty-six-year-old virgin. As her body begins to deteriorate as the result of an unknown ailment, she finds herself intrigued by the beautiful and vibrant Anita. Initially unwilling to admit her attraction, Patsy distracts herself with work, her best friend’s quest to find the perfect tattoo artist, and the politics of her wealthy Houston family. When Patsy grows increasingly ill, she decides that she must find a way to get Anita’s attention before it’s too late.

Advent, Gregory Baxter

LSU Master's Theses

The novel follows the lives of a family in a Texas tourist town after a stranger's arrival.

On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Lars Eighner became homeless in 1988 after leaving a job he had held for ten years as an attendant at a state hospital in Austin, Texas. He lives in a small apartment in Austin and continues to scavenge. This article was originally published in the Fall 1990 issue of The Threepenny Review. Reprinted with permission.