Creative Writing Commons^™

Afterparty, Patrick M. Werle

Creative Writing Programs

Afterparty is built on the question, “Can one overcome the past?”...I think. While the work flows on a loose timeline, I do not intend the manuscript to be a story. As the poems drift in and out of time periods; childhood, adolescence, fatherhood, I hope that this is also a collection that can be opened in the middle or paged through and still be successful. Of course, as the artist, I would love for people to take the journey beginning to end. And I also believe that poetry collections should be able to have a reader jump in at any …

Literary Language Revitalization: Nêhiyawêwin, Indigenous Poetics, And Indigenous Languages In Canada, Emily L. Kring

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation reads the spaces of connection, overlap, and distinction between nêhiyaw (Cree) poetics and the concepts of revitalization, repatriation, and resurgence that have risen to prominence in Indigenous studies. Engaging revitalization, resurgence, and repatriation alongside the creative work of nêhiyaw and Métis writers (Louise Bernice Halfe, Neal McLeod, and Gregory Scofield), this dissertation explores how creative, literary applications of nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) model an approach to Indigenous language revitalization that is consonant with nêhiyaw understandings of embodiment, storytelling, memory, kinship, and home. Broadly, I argue that Halfe’s, McLeod’s, and Scofield’s creative practices encourage the ongoing use, valuing, and teaching …

Thinking Before You Act: A Constructive Logic Approach To Crafting Performance-For- Development Narrative, Angela Duggins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis was to test the feasibility of constructing performance-for-development narrative using a constructive logic approach. I created an equation which expressed the sum of non-human-elements as the sum of a narrative with each element serving as a variable. I used a review of persuasion literature to provide insight into the selection and manipulation of each variable. I provided my family as a hypothetical example and used my knowledge of their preferences and communication styles in conjunction with the literature and the equation to craft a narrative which might increase pro-school attitudes in other families like my …

Mechanical Parts, Kyle W. White-Mcginn

Creative Writing Programs

A collection of poems related to cancer, boxing, and a fictionalized Rochester, Minnesota (renamed Medicine City).

The Body Mends Itself, Hannah Elizabeth Dow

Dissertations

The following poems were completed by the author between September 2014 and April 2017.

Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines literary representations of the black female body in selected poetry by U.S. African American writer Audre Lorde and Afro-Brazilian writer Miriam Alves, focusing on how their literary projects construct and defy notions of black womanhood and black female sexualities in dialogue with national narratives and contexts. Within an historical, intersectional and transnational theoretical framework, this study analyses how the racial, gender and sexual politics of representation are articulated and negotiated within and outside the political and literary movements in the U.S. and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. As a theoretical framework, this research elaborates and uses …

A Girlhood Among Ghosts, An Experimental Project, Maple Wu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“If a woman is going to write a Book of Peace, it is given her to know devastation” – Maxine Hong Kingston, The Fifth Book of Peace.

I do not believe I know devastation. I think to be devastated means one has to experience extreme pain, and live in the aftermath of trauma. I think of this in terms of war, famine, and immigration. A little self-reflection shows that in the twenty-something years of my life, I have not encountered any of the three things listed.

What I do recall, however, is the first time I picked up Maxine …

A Monumental History: Stories Of The Berkshires, Kimberly Bolduc

Honors Theses

A Monumental History: Stories of the Berkshires is a creative-nonfiction work focusing on stories surrounding forgotten monuments in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts. The Berkshires exhibit a distinct regional culture that has set them apart from the rest of Massachusetts and indeed from the rest of the rural and urban United States. As one of the first American frontiers, the region was settled by self-reliant and determined pioneers who had to endure harsh environments, Native American unrest, wars, and political and religious disturbances and disagreements. Utopian communities like the Shakers would settle in the Berkshires, drawn by their promise …

Lesbian Love Sonnets: Adrienne Rich And Carol Ann Duffy, Robin Seiler-Garman

Senior Theses

Our conceptualization of sexuality is rooted in gender. Modern, western society defines sexuality as which genders one is and is not attracted to—often appearing as a binary between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Recently, however, queer theorists have begun to push against the idea of binary sexuality altogether.

The interplay between gender and sexuality additionally manifests in the history of literature. Because the two are so intimately intertwined, writing about sexuality necessitates writing about gender. Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich and Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy are two poetry collections where, as lesbian poets, gender and sexuality play an important role. …

The Montagnards, Jarred J. Marlatt

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Founding Farce, Or, The Lost Debates Of The Constitutional Convention: Being An Account Of The Discovery Of An Overlooked Document, And The Loss Again, And Rediscovery Of Said Document, Wherein Is Written Unheard Proceedings In The Crafting Of The Glorious Constitution Of These 13 Colonies (Which Has Lately Been Misplaced), Alexander W. Pickens

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The Constitutional Convention was shrouded in mystery, yet America has been confidently given a narrative of what went on behind closed doors in Philadelphia. Though most of our authentic records of what went on were written by men assumed to be reliable, the deeper one reads into history the more unreliable they become, recent evidence even suggesting that James Madison altered his notes on the Convention years after it was concluded. What if our perception of history is flawed and the Convention was not the glorious meeting of intellectual giants but instead a town hall full of immature behemoths who …

Dinner At Eight, Anastasia M. Berkovich

MSU Graduate Theses

This creative thesis is comprised of six short stories of fiction in various styles and lengths, as well as a critical introduction wherein I discuss the various influences on my work, ranging from Charles Baxter and Karen Joy Fowler to Doležel and John Gardner. All of these stories share a theme of family and loss. Each story also grapples in some way with changing times and places. I have endeavored, by using rhyming action, repeating images, and melodrama, to give each story a great sense of emotion, a feeling both specific to the story but connects to the wider reading …

A Social Study Of Discworld Autonomy, Morgan Rogers

Senior Theses

From 1983 to 2015, Sir Terry Pratchett wrote a series of forty-one novels, several short stories, and companion works set on the Discworld. The Discworld is a flat world that rides through space on the backs of four giant elephants that stand themselves on the back of the Great A’tuin, a world turtle. The Disc is based around the Hub, or central point, and the Rim, or the circumference of the world. There is a waterfall all around the Rim of the world that falls into space itself. The Hub compares to the Earth’s poles in that it is the …

Eight Pieces Of Pie., Maggie E. Cassaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As a studio artist and a creative writer, I contemplated what would happen if I utilized the principles of fine art in the application of the written word. If I became the subject of the written word, could I formulate the telling of my story in such a way that a reader could find themselves sculpted within its pages? Eight Pieces of Pie tells my story, that as a single woman at the age of forty-three years, eight months and six days, I discovered I was unavailable. I delved back to my first memories to discover how my emotional unavailability …

This Is What You Want: Stories, Savannah Blake Horton

Honors Projects

This is What You Want: Stories is a collection of nine stories exploring the role of humor in dark situations. It is a work of fiction.

A Scholarly Fictional Narrative Portraying The Stigma That Surrounds Mental Illness And Its Place In Literature, Adrianna Robinson

Honors Theses

The purpose of this scholarly fictional narrative is meant to reveal the struggles that individuals with mental illness go through, not only in their personal lives, but also with their place in society. I lay out research around the stigma that surrounds mental illness first, defining both public and self-stigma in relation to mental illness. I also briefly mention Girl, Interrupted and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how authors have addressed the stigma that surrounds mental illness in literature in the past. The research is an important part of understanding why I write the fictional narrative the way I do, …

New Year, Old Blues, Joy Bowman

Theses and Dissertations--English

This collection aims through the use of folktale and familial history to investigate the bounds of gender and memory against a rural Appalachian landscape. The work utilizes superstition, myth, and the commonplace to search the shadows for the forbidden and unspoken, in an attempt to redefine and reconcile personal dissonance through an observational and at times, voyeuristic lens.

For The King, Mary Maeve Mcgeorge

Canterbury Scholars

No abstract provided.

William Shakespeare As A Purveyor Of Re-Productions: Understanding Shakespeare’S Plays As Profitable Products, Giannina Ong

Canterbury Scholars

This project, “Recasting William Shakespeare in The Business of Playwriting,” works to reinvigorate the value gained by reading Shakespeare by:

• Beginning with espousing the importance of reading Shakespeare as a practical businessman first, instead of the mythological literary genius that men decades and now centuries after Shakespeare marketed and herald him as. Although this is not the primary focus of this paper, it is an important framework that begins to enable us to shift our presumptions of the canonical text, Romeo and Juliet .
• The next section sets the backdrop, i.e. the environment, in which Shakespeare used an emerging profession …

Conversations Of The Waning Moon, Anam F. Ismail

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation

No abstract provided.

Splitting The Avocado: Short Fiction On Themes Of Power, Gender, And The Hope Of Change, Abigail Mcbride

Honors Projects and Presentations: Undergraduate

Being a woman who writes about life then, whatever that might mean, is what this project is about, because in that way this male seeing of the world is not silenced but rather transformed by the other side of a conversation that has always been one-sided. I read that and thought, wow, I’m doing something political, something revolutionary, something that’s part of a bigger legacy of women completely revolutionizing traditional discourse!But as I look over the stories I’ve written, I find something very different. I find something intensely personal, even private, in my own relation to gender. I thought I …

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 …

The Geographic Center Of Nowhere, Sharon Mauldin Reynolds

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The Geographic Center of Nowhere. A collection of short stories exploring the perseverance of several women in varied situations.

Arak And Other Stories, Fatima Sausan Masoud

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Set in the West Bank, Arak and Other Stories follows the lives of members of the Al-Hakim family. Through the stories, Palestinian-American, Layla Al-Hakim, uncovers long buried family secrets and discovers deep connections to her Palestinian cousins.

Voices Of Ancient Women: Stories And Essays On Persephone And Medusa, Isabelle George Rosett

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis combines art historical analysis and creative writing in a collection of essays and short stories centered on the myths of Persephone and Medusa. Ancient art, text, and context is considered in the essays, while the stories approach these subjects on a more contemporary and personal level.

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 …

Women Of The Apocalypse: Afrospeculative Feminist Novelists, Bianca L. Spriggs

Theses and Dissertations--English

“Women of the Apocalypse: Feminist Afrospeculative Writers,” seeks to address the problematic ‘Exodus narrative,’ a convention that has helped shape Black American liberation politics dating back to the writings of Phyllis Wheatley. Novels by Zora Neale Hurston, Octavia Butler, and Alice Walker undermine and complicate this narrative by challenging the trope of a single charismatic male leader who leads an entire race to a utopic promised land. For these writers, the Exodus narrative is unsustainable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is because there is no room for women to operate outside of the role of …

Retracing John Muir's Thousand-Mile Walk To The Gulf, Chadwick N. Gilpin

Theses and Dissertations--English

In 1867, the budding naturalist and future father of our national parks, John Muir, embarked on his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf from Jeffersonville, Indiana, to Cedar Key, Florida. Almost 150 years later I undertook the same journey, retracing the wilderness advocate’s footsteps through the South to catalog all that has changed in a century and a half of progress, to try and better understand the inception of his environmental ethics, and to learn to see the world as he did, harmonious, interconnected, rejuvenating and imbued with a pervasive spirituality. The chapters of this thesis retell selected legs of that …

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. …