Creative Writing Commons^™

The Skinny House, Leo August Jilk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The title of my thesis is The Skinny House, a phrase which might indicate: 1) The body of a human or other animal, 2) A coffin or grave, and 3) A residence in Mamaroneck, New York built of recycled materials (e.g. railroad ties and a chicken coop) by an African-American carpenter named Nathan T. Seely in 1932. Seely and his brother ran a business that thrived for several years prior to the Great Depression, catering specifically to Southern blacks moving north. While only a few pages of my thesis are directly concerned with the Mamaroneck residence and its social implications, …

Heaven On Their Minds, Rebecca Kate Robison

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Heaven on Their Minds is a novel written from the first-person perspective of teenage

protagonist Melody O’Malley. The plot details Melody’s attempt, along with two close friends, to undermine their conservative Christian theater camp’s summer production of Godspell via the edgier songs and theology of Jesus Christ Superstar. Though ostensibly a satire of the Evangelical Christian community, Melody’s insecurities are the true heart of the novel--her fraught relationship with her best friends, her concerns about her post-high school future, and her ill-advised crush on the most prominent RFC (Robot for Christ) in the camp, a crush that has terrible consequences …

Seers In Greensand, Michael Lawrence Berger

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis on poetry has culminated in a poetry manuscript of 60 pages in length. Many of the poems in this manuscript are inspired by my experiences studying English poetry and literature in this program, with a particular emphasis on devotional and spiritual poetry and poetics. A third of my thesis poem, in fact, came out of my experiences fulfilling the “study abroad” requirement in my MFA. To fulfill that requirement, I embarked on a couple pilgrimage walks through rural parts of the United Kingdom. The longest walk was the one I took from …

Wolf!!! Vol. 1, Jamison Crabtree

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following manuscript, titled "WOLF!!! vol. 1," investigates the cultural fetishization of power. By placing value on power and on progress, each lauded for their own sake, distances these values from how they serve people. In a situation like this, a system of power is virtuous as far as it can't be overcome by another power. This concern is postmodern one; recognized by theorists such as Foucault, Lyotard, and Jameson. Lyotard posits that efficiency becomes the rubric for goodness in a late-capitalist society. Something is considered good if it produces the maximum amount of output with a minimal amount of …

Keep Moving: Stories, Syed Haider Shahbaz

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My thesis is a collection of short stories, all of which revolve around themes of travel, migration, and displacement. Ranging from short, one-page flash fiction pieces to longer stories, the six pieces in the collection are put together with the hope that they will thematically interact with each other and provide new meanings and interpretations for the whole collection, even as they continue to stand as distinct narratives in their own right. Through their interplay, I hope to throw light on the way human relationships are challenged by movement and migration.

The Edge Of Mercury, Aurora Brackett

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Edge of Mercury is a collection of stories inspired by myth, ritual and fairy tales. Many of the stories in this collection investigate the making of meaning and the construction of identity. Others directly reference Biblical stories or Greek and Roman myths, seeking to fuse contemporary realism with the numinous, and to create in the pairing, a narrative that is focused on the liminal, the silence beneath plot. In “Brother Death” two sisters create a ritual to revive their living-dead brother, only to lose him in the current of a river. In “Ambrosia,” the ghost of Pavarotti’s mother is …

Mouthy Bones, Shaun Leonard

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As a collection of poetry, this work interrogates the well trodden ground of the Beloved, hopefully with a modicum of originality, though the text itself wonders if, and how (and how!). Can “us” be? Amorous capability is extolled and explored, and people worry. Love happens, and everything is all right. Love happens, and nothing is alright. And then it is. The poems play with the act of writing and how that affects the reader, the subject/s, and the memories being used as fodder. The time and space of emotion and selfhood are melded and molded, through unexpected line breaks, poetic …

Mr. Universe Wants To Live Forever, Oksana Marafioti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An aging rock star suffers from Alzheimer, and must deal with loss of identity.

Tearing Up The Tallgrass, Brett Salsbury

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This creative thesis project is a culmination of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree at UNLV. The thesis—currently titled Tearing up the Tallgrass—was composed entirely during my graduate semesters at UNLV. As a book of poetry, it explores the dynamics of humans in nature, white privilege, objectivity, fact- and myth-making, and artistic practice. Written under the supervision of Claudia Keelan (committee chair) and Donald Revell (committee member), my committee further includes P. Jane Hafen (English) and Pierre Lienard (Anthropology). Their disparate subject and genre interests are meant to diversify the feedback received during this project’s composition. Some …