Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Valhalla In Escrow, Deena Lilygren

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

A collection of short stories.

A Fast-Moving Storm, Amanda Kelley Corbin

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection of linked short stories follows a young woman who takes on a job as a property manager in Lexington, Kentucky after the death of her parents. These stories explore a cast of characters she encounters as well as her struggle to adjust to her new life.

Daffodils: A Completely Unrelated Collection Of Short Stories, Sawyer E.P. Henshaw

Scripps Senior Theses

“Daffodils” is a collection of three fictional short stories without obvious thematic connection, yet all containing tenacious female characters. “The Winner” is told from the unflinching voice of a young wife in her struggle for control within the newfound environment of a Massachusetts boarding school. “The Seers” is a dystopian story, taking place in a world with months of “Sun” and months of dark at a time, intimately describing the effects of this phenomenon upon the civilization. Lastly, “Plastic Flowers” examines the loss of love and comfort within a relationship, depicting the insecurities of young adult life in New York …

The Geometry Of Loss: A Novel, Elidio La Torre La Torre

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the year 2025, Orlando Aniello, nicknamed “Or,” a Puerto Rican poet with a broken life, becomes a “consciousness in virtual space.” Tricked by a couple of goons that devote most of their duties to bootleg memories for people who lead dull and meaningless lives, Orlando’s personality splits into fragments. As consequence, his actual experiences blend the host’s own recollections, which accidentally upload to Orlando’s brain. If bootleg mnemonic technologies glitch, Orlando does not know who he is anymore. Indeed, Orlando/ Gogo/ Alejandro suffers anterograde memory loss, and the narrator becomes merely a voice without a body. A geometry of …

Return To Sender, Katherine Noelle Nypaver

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Return to Sender is a fictional short story that illustrates the potential consequences of neglecting to take others seriously. River Ellison, a high school senior at St. Jude’s Academy struggling with depression and habitual self-harm, receives a note from his peer regarding his thoughts on suicide. His ordinary school day transforms into twenty-four hours of repercussions that force River to see his peer for what she is—an equal. Prefacing the short story, my critical essay explains why I find C.D. Payne, John Green, Jesse Andrews, and J.D. Salinger so inspiring to the young adult literature world. I also analyze how …

"The Mouth Of The Void," "Hum", Hannah L. Comeriato

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project presents two distinct pieces of short fiction, linked through intentional stylized language, grammatical patterns, and a sectionalized narrative structure. Each individual piece of short fiction functions independently – as separate and distinct from the other, with no explicit connection in content (i.e. recurring characters, parallel timelines etc.). However, each narrative also displays a kind of complex interaction with the other, each crafted to produce, when read alongside one another, a shared indistinct aesthetic and emotional experience. This aesthetic and emotional experience is crafted, specifically, by the use of stylized verbs, the em-dash, and alternating dialogue-based and image-based sections. …

Beneath The Foundation, Michele Cooley

Graduate Thesis Collection

Beneath the Foundation is a work of fiction, a detective novel that follows protagonist Cheryl Simpson as she’s thrust into the middle of a murder mystery. Cheryl lives a quite life, an attempt at hiding from her past, but when she arrives at work one Saturday morning and finds her boss dead of a gunshot wound, she finds herself pulled into the middle of the investigation. Clues start popping up all around her, and once they start showing up in her apartment, she realizes there’s more at stake than figuring out who killed her boss. As Cheryl works through the …

[Review Of The Book Brown Girl Dreaming, By J. Woodson], Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Jacqueline Woodson is an award-winning children's literature author, who, early in her career, was touted by renowned children's literature sholar Rudine Sims Bishop as one of the most promising children's literature authors of her generation. Lauded for her ability to write honestly about social issues, marginalized youth, and popular culture, Woodson, to date, has written over twenty-five texts for youth, spanning several genres- from novels and picture books to books-in-verse and short stories. She is, as predicted, a major voice in children's literature. In Brown Girl Dreaming, a book written for youth, Woodson explores how she learned to develop …

Wait Until I'M Dead! A Novel Of Family Secrets By Elda Dawber, Cordelia Anderson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

The Execution Of Private Mcguffin, Clay Mountcastle

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

A fictional take on the discipline meted out by a cavalry unit fighting on the Great Plains.

Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit.

Pecan Grove Review Volume 18, St. Mary's University

Pecan Grove Review

Creative writings by students, faculty, and staff of the St. Mary's University community.

This Is Not Your Life, Ella M. Carroll-Smith

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

My novel, This Is Not Your Life examines themes of identity, class, and fate. Identical twin sisters, Annie and Quinn Graves, shared a troubled childhood, which led each of them down very different life paths. Annie is now climbing the corporate ladder at work, while Quinn leads the perfect family life in Richmond’s elite suburbs. And yet, they’re both unhappy, yearning for something different than the lives that seem to have chosen them. The two women decide to switch places for a while, hoping for a change of scenery and lifestyle. However, that decision has potentially disastrous consequences for them …

Trickling, Marissa Medley

Honors Projects

A collection of poetry and other writings that explore family relationships with a focus on mental illness.

Greenbroke: Stories, Sarah Jean Rains

Graduate Theses

In my collection Greenbroke: Stories, I explore the underbelly of the equestrian world. On the surface, the equestrian community is viewed as a world for the wealthy. It is viewed as a community of extravagance and excess. Additionally, there are few pieces of fiction that actually take the reader beyond the glamor of the surface. My stories do just that. Throughout my collection it was my aim to allow readers into a world that is different from the stereotypical equine community they thought they knew. In my stories, horse people watch their worlds collapse around them. My characters exist …

Crafting Iron And Other Stories, Bryana Michelle Fern

Master's Theses

The stories that follow in this collection attempt to reveal studies in characters facing loneliness, and to do so by following Alice Munro’s conception of plot—the notion that characters shape the plot according to their position in the various “rooms” of the story. Feelings of loneliness look different for everyone, and necessitate many different methods of filling that hole. In these stories, many variations of loneliness are explored. A Vietnam veteran struggles to find healing through the adoption of his young godson, whose father was his best friend in the war; a lady in Surrey, England, takes a trip in …

People Sitting In The Dark: Stories, Trent Chabot

Graduate Theses

In my story collection, People Sitting in the Dark: Stories, I explore the ever troubling theme of how to cope with loss, and occasionally, how to cope with not losing when one is so accustomed to it. Though some of my stories are connected with reappearing characters, they are not all written in such a way. Characters in the background of one story may be given the narration of one later in the story, thus changing how the reader views the character through difference perspectives. I wanted to explore how point of view can drastically change the sympathy and empathy …

How To Hitchhike West With A Promise, Max Wojciechowski

All NMU Master's Theses

This work is an excerpt of a larger novel in progress that closely follows the journey of the main character, Charlie, who is hitchhiking from the Chicago suburbs to California in order to spread his mother’s ashes. It takes inspiration from the traditional American road trip novels, while following a contemporary narrative that dives into the main character’s judgmental attitude toward his fellow human. The story highlights his character growth with tips for hitchhiking that Charlie directs toward the audience sporadically throughout the piece. Charlie happens to be gay. A conscious decision was made to not highlight his sexual orientation, …

Swamp Boat, Gravy Boat: Memory And Place In Fiction, Kaycie Surrell

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The importance of memory to place is of particular interest to me and forms the basis for the bulk of my work. In my critical introduction I explore the work of authors and essayists who inspire my fiction work through their focus on place and memory. Specific authors include Sandra Cisneros, David Sedaris, and Pam Houston. Through my short fiction pieces I weave together the stories of my childhood from Florida to Missouri into a quilt that covers the important pieces of my life thus far. I am interested in how people are motivated by fear to write around their …

2016-The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Of Spinifex Press, Kathleen Barry

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Harry Potter And Hamilton From The Stage To The Page, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In this article originally published in Public Books, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner offers commentary on the two best-selling plays on record, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Hamilton. Specifically, Pollack-Pelzner examines how the Anglo-American world’s favorite orphans play at home, adopted, as it were, from the stage to the page.

The Molloy Student Literary Magazine Volume 14, Damian Hey Ph.D., Joseph Ostapiuk, Chloe Chappa, Adrianna Solis, Mary Akt Gallagher, Morgan Anderson, Frank Caiazzo, Nicole Esposito, Lauren Kalista, Vincent Mascia, Christopher Rontanini, Annmarie Sivert, Meghan Kristyn Collins, Emily Jareb, Helen Daly, Idalis Jones, Elizabeth Miranda, Victoria Vaglica

The Molloy Student Literary Magazine

The Molloy Student Literary Magazine, sponsored by Molloy College’s Office of Student Affairs, is devoted to publishing the best previously unpublished works of prose, poetry, drama, literary review, criticism, and other literary genres, that the Molloy student community has to offer. The journal welcomes submissions, for possible publication, from currently enrolled Molloy students at all levels. All submitted work will undergo a review process initiated by the Managing Editor prior to a decision being made regarding publication of said work. Given sufficient content, The Molloy Student Literary Magazine is published twice annually in Spring and Fall.

Weeki Wachee, 1980, Laura Gabel-Hartman

CutBank

No abstract provided.

Orphan Markdown, Dan Pinkerton

CutBank

No abstract provided.

Real California Living, Jennifer Murvin

CutBank

No abstract provided.

Bloodlines, Maxim Loskutoff

CutBank

No abstract provided.

Crick, Terrance Manning, Jr.

CutBank

No abstract provided.

The Die Hards, Casey S. O'Higgins

Student Publications

A prequel to the Up-All-Nighters, a glimpse into the tragic tale of Rick Rearman: Vampire Hunter. The average man living a supernatural life, Rick Rearman hunts for creatures of the night to avenge his fallen mother. Rearman only wants three things in life, a girl, justice, and a new wardrobe. The spectacularly unspectacular Rick Rearman doesn't deserve a poetry; however, his story was too compelling to pass up.

A Lagoa Do Cacimbo, Heather Leila H. Jordan Mph

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

A Lagoa do Cacimbo is a work of fiction which explores the dissonance between modern, urban, middle class Angolans and their rural past.

La Quebrada Y La Costa Peruanas En Voces Narrativas A Mediados Del Siglo Xx: María Rosa Macedo Y Sara María Larrabure, Ricardo N. Fernández

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Each of the two female writers at the crux of this dissertation, María Rosa Macedo (1909-1991) and Sara María Larrabure (1921-1962), wrote an unparalleled novel: respectively, Rastrojo (1944) and Rioancho (1949). Their primary and complementary narratives overlap in the sociocultural, historical and political context of the first half of 20^th-century Peru. This study proposes to demonstrate how the given premise of their link, particularly in portraying the coastal region they both know intimately, is in line with what Antonio Cornejo Polar (1989) calls "La totalidad literaria como totalidad social". To what extent these two authors contribute to such …

Olive In An Oak Grove: A Novel, Haley Quinton

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Olive Delaney has not seen her dysfunctional family in seven years, but now she has to return to her childhood home in Louisiana because her father is dying. She is reunited with her simultaneously strict-but-absent parents, her twin brother, Hugo, with whom she was once close but has now grown apart, and her childhood best friend and possible lost love, Owen. Olive must learn how to be part of her family again while also dealing with the problems and family secrets of the past. The novella shuttles back and forth in time--every other chapter contains an event from Olive’s childhood …