Creative Writing Commons^™

A Fried Egg, Ellen Cooney

Bryant Literary Review

a fried egg
a small sun

She Feeds Me Now, Susan Johnson

Bryant Literary Review

I read cookbooks as if they were ancient texts,
the life of grandmother's grandmother translated

Phantom, Adam Matson

Bryant Literary Review

The pinky finger betrayed her. It sent a signal to Martin, who reached out from beneath the frilly cuff of his costume and grasped it.

Cul-De-Sac, Dennis Saleh

Bryant Literary Review

The night at
the door is
torn and frayed

The Accident, Victoria Melekian

Bryant Literary Review

I pass the stone walls
of the bridge. Bouquets

Clown School In France, Lee Kisling

Bryant Literary Review

How do these two things fit together--
the rain falls on the just and the unjust, and yet

Class Mate, John Kristofco

Bryant Literary Review

"Hey, has anybody seen my Hawthorne?" Terrence Terrill poked his head into the small living room.

The Woods Ate Them, Amanda J. Burgess

Senior Honors Projects

For this project I set out to write a hybrid novella-memoir, while reading novels by authors generating work of a similar aim. I also took an offset printing course to learn how to print completed work, because I was interested in being able to myself make a book. Throughout, the intention of this work was an exploration of the density of the imagination and the self - all the lives we create, even if we never live them.

During my time at the University of Rhode Island, I have made repeated visits to cetain arguments and ideas, questions that intrigue …

Short Fiction: Ulmus, Ward Heilman

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

A Rumba For Rothko And Other Poems, Dennis O'Connell

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Throughout the last few years, I have been examining the role that objects play within my poetic production. My hope was to notice my own interaction with objects more precisely and to pursue poetic questions (and philosophical implications about subjectivity and objectivity) that have been asked before by modernist writers such as Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams. These two writers in particular had their own reasons for pursuing, through their writing, basic questions about representation of the world in art and language.

Offensive, Hope Jordan

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Bowling, Brian Austin

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Excerpts From Television's Greatest Hits And Other Stories, Zachary Stephen Williams

Master's Theses

The short stories contained in this manuscript are mostly of the realist stripe, with a few concessions made to my more fabulist tendencies. Each is about men and women being forced to relive their old lives or finding themselves at the cusp of new ones, propositions which prove simultaneously attractive and repulsive. By the end of each story, it is my hope to transmit that the characters have survived somewhat intact, though reconstituted. There is a man in grief over the death of the wife he couldn’t stop cheating on, adults trick-or-treating at the expense of their children’s youths, a …

Looker: Stories, George Robert Hargett

Master's Theses

The following stories, completed by the author between August 2013 and February 2015, deal with love, obscurity, isolation, failure, vulnerability and insecurity, looking and losing, the fears tied up in all these, and, once in a while, gaining.

Young, Black, And Gifted, Kevin Son

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Oblivious, Sarah Steil

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Neon Tiger, Taylor Lea Hicks

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Bluegill // Our Disillusion In Three Acts, Savanah Skinner

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

American Pastoral With Warped Floorboards, Dante Di Stefano

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Tap Shoe Memento Mori, Rachel Beneway

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

A Drop Left, Oliver Diaz

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Lip Prints: Fuse My Genes With Fish Scales, Christina Mortellaro

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

[Unspecified Endocrine Disorder], Codie Hazen

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Adirondacks, Devon Poniatowski

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

The Modern And The Celestial: Re-Imagining Hawthorne’S ‘The Celestial Railroad’, Connor J. Bell

Honors Theses

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s commentary through his works of fiction are said to be timeless. However, what would his fiction look like in response to the direction that society has taken since he has passed? This thesis seeks to illustrate Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sentiments in regards to modern society. Through close analysis of Hawthorne’s works, his life, and his morals, his ideas have been illustrated in a contemporary reimagining of one of Hawthorne’s most profound satires, “The Celestial Railroad.” In this re-write, modern technologies and mentalities are brought into consideration in accordance to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ideals.

Past The Edge Of The Forest, Emily M. Suess

All NMU Master's Theses

This fictional work traces the superstitions around No Name Forest as members of the town just beyond the forest begin to disappear. While set in present day, the piece draws on the way fairy tales use the inexplicable and strange to engage readers in questioning the human experience. The story details the disappearances of several people from the town of Little Haven. While each of these disappearances are presented in individual tales, they are linked together through the voice of a girl who has been tracking the disappearances. In search of the father who abandoned her, Gwynn Halpert is interested …

A Negotiation In Meaning: Identifying American Cultural Touchstones, Jayne Jaya Todai

Honors Theses

How can discussing a poem lead to a meaningful conversation? What if Americans used common poems as their nation's cultural touchstones? In my essay, I will explore how poems that serve as American cultural touchstones might develop better communicators within the United States. I will propose a template that determines which poems would qualify as these national touchstones.

Impact Of Ekphrastic Poetry Upon My Writing, Lacy C. Snapp

Honors Theses

This thesis contains an introduction in which I will define ekphrastic poetry and provide an explication of some ekphrastic poetry written throughout history, followed by a conclusion in which I will include my own poetry, both ekphrastic and non, followed by an explication of my progress. The first section will be about questioning how the selected poets use their chosen image to enhance their own writing, and the true purpose of ekphrastic poetry. The second section will show how my poetry has developed since this project began and I started focusing on ekphrastic poetry. When I write ekphrastic poetry, not …

The Fable And The Fabulous: The Use Of Traditional Forms In Children's Literature, John Joseph Hill

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

To the outside world, Northern California might be trees, granola, hippies, rivers, snowboarders, environmentalists, farming, beaches, diverse wildlife, and wealth. Through a series of loosely interlocking fiction stories, this thesis explores the Northern California below the surface where people work as garbage collectors by day and attend community college by night, where teenage girls scam people in the park for free alcohol, where lovers spend their date night as part of a nude human-chain to protect an old growth redwood from being cut down, and where animal rights activists smoke cigarettes and seek love. Informed by personal experience and a …

Prescribed Fire, Moira J. Mcavoy

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

As the culmination of my nonfiction seminar (ENGL 470C) with Professor Colin Rafferty, I chose to explore three disparate, but interwoven, narratives: the death of and delayed grief over my high school mentor; my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; and, the 2011 wildfire that destroyed much of the Great Dismal Swamp. Through a use of segmentation, lyric language, and a manipulation of tense, I explore the tensions underlying these narratives, namely the idea of futility of preparation and the insistence on destructive cycles which sustain themselves. Ultimately, the essay serves on a rumination not on mortality, but on our cultural …