Creative Writing Commons^™

One Last Month, Or Clancy's Time-Box, Safiyya Bintali

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

One Last Month is a young adult (YA) novella of roughly forty-three thousand words aimed at readers in middle school and in early high school grades. Structurally, it is an “ensemble Bildungsroman”, wherein all the main characters—rather than just one—embark on journeys of emotional growth and are given significant plot focus. Through the characters, One Last Month focuses on the importance and influence of non-romantic love, specifically through homosocial relationships between the novella’s male characters. It also touches on the process of grief beyond the Kübler-Ross structure and, though more subtly, emotional expression in young men. Through one of the …

We Are Not Friends, Fred G. Leebron

English Faculty Publications

There is something about the way the phone rings that lets you know it's Them - a kind of glitter in the chime, a certain je ne sais quoi to the cadence, which seems to skip a beat as if it can't believe that They are calling. You pick up, heart throbbing, getting ready to move your mouth, a sly frisson of sweat striking your palms.

"They asked me to call," Their assistant says. "They want you at the house next Thursday. And then you'll all go somewhere. A plane will be involved. You'll want to bring a passport. Until …