Creative Writing Commons^™

Climbing The Cerulean Butte, Emma Knudson

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis contains third-person memoir writing by Emma Knudson.

• What Did the Loss Mean to You?
• How Do You Experience Your Grief?
• What Kind of Strategies Do You Use to Cope?
• What Kind of Guidance is Helpful?
• With Whom Do You Share Your Loss?

Private Rainbows, Mikey F. Estes

Theses and Dissertations

I make art that refers to how the self is mediated through structures, objects, and images — a kind of self-portraiture that circles around its subject, reflecting a state of simultaneous formation and disintegration. Over the past few years, I have used my iPhone as a tool to make images of everyday life. As the user of this device, I am defined by both my presence and absence. I am interested in the process of locating the self within the scattered yet ordered space of the screen.

Mutual Vulnerability And Intergenerational Healing: Black Women Hbcu Students Writing Memoir, Zelda Lockhart

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study sought to gain insight into the unique experiences of Black women students who were writing memoir toward the goal of self-definition in a Black feminist learning environment at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU). Two teaching methods included personal plot (an extension of expressive writing that offers writing prompts for emotional closure), and biblio-fusion (a combination of expressive writing and bibliotherapy) (Lockhart, 2017a; 2017b). Interviews were conducted with six Black women participants and triangulated against their personal essays and online journal responses. Personal plot, a form of narrative analysis was used to construct paragraphs on what each …

A Town Slowly Burned: Life And Death In A Small Louisiana Town, Victoria C. Bush

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

When Tori Bush’s father died of chemical causes related to Agent Orange, she found herself obsessed with tracing dioxins, one of the main ingredient of Agent Orange in other American communities. She began to visit and interview residents of Mossville, Louisiana, a small town on the border of Texas, which has fourteen petrochemical facilities surrounding the town. The residents also had been exposed to dioxins. Grief and anger connected Tori to this story, but it is far larger—is the right to a healthy natural environment a part of our American citizenship?

You Are Here, Emma L. Carlton

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

N/A

The Fool And The Flood: A Journey, Michelle R. Hoover

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This journey based narrative inspired by the traditional narrative of the Major Arcana cards in the tarot, centers on The Fool and his interactions with the rest of the Major Arcana. The Fool’s journey centers on memory, regaining personal power, admitting and accepting weakness, and creating a personal place in relation to a larger world. This evolution throughout the journey is explored through detailed repeating imagery and symbols drawn from a mixture of traditional tarot imagery and the author’s personal image set created for this narrative.

North Of Almost Everything, Joseph Kelly

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

I Am Florida, Marian M. Kaufman

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Holy, These Gaps, Elspeth Jeanne Lindner

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

N/A

If It's Hot, Annelle L. Magnuson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Dancing Plague, Jacquelyn Nasti

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Care Forgotten, James M. Norris

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Japanese Culture In New Orleans, Suzanne P. Tafur

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This text highlights the small Japanese community in New Orleans, along with its cultural traditions.

So Many Stars Fall In July, Jacob H. Reecher

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Debris, Daniel Sutter

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

N/A

Strange Woods, Song Park

Graduate School of Art Theses

I am interested in searching for images of women that have not been adequately represented in visual art. As a visual artist, I am directed by my sense of sight to investigate and know something. I like to challenge myself to visualize things that do not already have a visual representation. It has been frustrating for me to create images of women, and I have experienced a deep ambivalence in response to the different images of women I have encountered. The socially and culturally constructed images of women that I have internalized and those that have developed from my own …

Misassembled Monsters, Jenn Brown

Graduate School of Art Theses

This thesis is a narrative of personal and material history. Through my work in painting, sculpture, and installation, I seek to share my story of emotional armoring in an attempt to connect to an audience. In my work, I look to my personal memories of growing up in a small, midwestern town and armoring myself with emotional barriers against its social construct of “normalcy.” Inspired by Medieval suits of armor and the characteristics of Goth culture throughout history, I employ my work to present the stage of a theatrical battleground. Creating each of my pieces is a fight for the …

Cosmic Valentine, Gabrielle Faith Williams

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Narrativization can empower us to reach beyond our loss and act as a trauma healer. This collection uses myth and spirituality to interrogate that suffering. Concerned with both physical and mystic bodies, the characters in these poems are reborn into new paradigms, attempting to diffuse loss (of dignity, hope, identity), and transform that injury into empowerment.

These poems explore those painful experiences through dreams and nonlinear magical visions, drawing from Surrealists painters like Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, whose dreamlike style informs the images in this collection.

Mysticism is essential to this work. The poems are meditations on death, love, …

& One Night The World Will Have Changed, Hanna Andrews

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

& One Night the World Will Have Changed is a collection of poems largely concerned with thresholds—what does one have to reconcile when standing at a precipice, when grappling with a crisis of faith, and how does one begin again? The collection is marked by three distinct sections: the first section of poems considers the effects of a devastating storm along with the emotional upheaval of abandonment (both the act of having been left, and then later, of leaving behind one life for a different one.) The second section is a series of prose poems that narrate the aftermath in …

Before And After Her Body, Shannon Austin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis, titled Before and After Her Body, is a full-length poetry manuscript submitted for completion of the Master of Fine Arts – Creative Writing Program. This collection delves into several interconnected themes, including gender, the female body, myth, legacy, and time. Broken into three main sections, these poems build from an examination of women as physical bodies to an exploration of women in conversation with other women and with themselves.

In these poems, characters from myth and popular culture blend with the persona of the narrator, who is at once an observer and a participant, discovering her own tradition …

Waiting For Nothing, Jiwoong Hyun

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In fulfillment of my MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction), I have written a thesis in the form of a novel entitled Waiting For Nothing.

In brief, my novel is about young people struggling to define their existence--or perceive a meaningful trajectory--within the troubled, detached-seeming technological present. Structurally speaking, it follows Tom, a young college graduate, who suffers from existential malaise and feels at a loss for what to do with his life. He drifts through vague, short-lived relationships with others, chooses to have only a few friends, spends a lot of time on the internet and its subcultures, and generally …

The New Cambrian Children, Shin Watanabe

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This MFA thesis is comprised of my collection of poetry entitled The New Cambrian Children. There are fifty-five pages of poetry in this thesis exploring themes of nature, technology, dystopia, and childhood.

Much of the contemporary writing and discussion surrounding the natural world and its relationship with humanity and technology imagines dystopia. There is a tendency to see the world arising from industrialization, computing technologies, and the World Wide Web as a violation of nature and human spirit. This book does not refute this emotional tenor, nor does it claim knowledge of its conclusion. Instead, it forwards conversations between these …

Crucible, Evan A. Poole

Sierpinski’s Square

No abstract provided.

Tragedy On Drury Lane, Natalie B. Ngong

Sierpinski’s Square

No abstract provided.

Directed By M. Night Shyamalan, Noemi Leibman

Sierpinski’s Square

No abstract provided.

An Environmentalist View Of Kentucky And Its Natural “Suitors” By Literary Analysis, Samuel C. Kessler

Sierpinski’s Square

An Environmentalist view of Kentucky and its Natural “Suitors” by Literary Analysis

Abstract

In the book “Divine Right’s Trip”, by Gurney Norman, the author provides a more modern, psychedelic-age epic, where the traditional theme of homecoming, often witnessed in Greek epics like the Odyssey, makes a connection with environmentalism. One reason for the unique combination of these themes is the effect created by a specific appeal for environmental support accompanied with the return of the main character, Divine Right (D.R.), to his small hometown in Eastern Kentucky where coal mining remains the prevalent employer. Upon his homecoming to Kentucky, D.R …

Vacation Days - What I Did This Summer, Wren A. Jenkins

Sierpinski’s Square

No abstract provided.

To A Proposition Most Despised- A Response To Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress", Wren A. Jenkins

Sierpinski’s Square

No abstract provided.

Rake The Springtime Across My Sheets, Ivy N. Irihamye

Sierpinski’s Square

No abstract provided.

The Middle Of Fucking Nowhere, Vera Heidmann

Senior Theses

This creative writing thesis incorporates memoir writing by Vera Heidmann.

• The Big House on the Hill
• Real Monsters
• Ragdoll
• Heart-shaped Box
• Beautiful