Creative Writing Commons^™

Peacekeepers: A Humboldt Love Story, Jeff Conner

Fiction and Poetry

He’s a small town police officer, committed to law and order.

She’s an activist, outlaw, and free spirit.

They live in close proximity, but their lives are worlds apart.

But together they undertake a journey of the heart, one that will take them to places unanticipated.

Mary Of The Yellow Sea, Nicole Rose Gomez

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Maria del Mar is the third of five children born to a poor seventh-generation Hispanic-Indigenous family in rural southern Colorado. Maria’s grandmother is a highly regarded midwife, and she herself is born with the healing gift. When she is twelve years old a gypsy reads her palm and predicts that she will soon receive a letter from the man that she will marry. Soon after the prophecy is made, Maria’s beloved father, Don Antonio suffers a heart attack and is left unable to work the family ranch, part of a land grant by the Spanish crown to their ancestors. Responsibility …

No Answering Riot, Jacob Z. Bienvenue

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I left this morning for Portland, Oregon—could be for good. Told my dear mother I was taking a day trip then hopped in her dinged up black Audi and felt the thing hum alive beneath me. Her speakers were still good, so I threw on a playlist with Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and all of the ragged traintrack prophets and went roaring out of those gilded hills for hopefully ever. There was no traffic getting to Sacramento; it took me just twenty minutes to hit the I-5 North juncture and after that I went peeling up the central flatlands …

Adobe Sugar, Liana Espey Woodward

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With a backdrop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Adobe Sugar is a collection of poems that finds divinity in the mundane through exploration of youth, decadence, and nourishment.

A Personal History Of Invasive Hands And Endangered Lovers, Samuel Paul Boudreau

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I thought I could be ridden hard and put away wet, wet, wet. I thought death and rape and drunkenness and unrequited love were functions of a typical life, a this-is-how-it-goes kinda world. But, as I’ve emerged from hellish muck, there has been a realization: the way we treat each other and the soil, the aching earth, needs to change. “A Personal History of Invasive Hands and Endangered Lovers” explores the relationship between intimacy and pain through a history of ecology and consumption, a melancholy of sorts. It amplifies trauma as a call-to-action and refuses to sit and take it. …

Fourth Wall An Exploration Of Lyric Possibility, Emma Pfeiffer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Cobalt Blue, Connor W. Southard

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Cobalt Blue is a collection of three pieces of fiction. The first piece is the titular short story, “Cobalt Blue.” The second is the short story “The Martyrdom of St. Canisius.” Finally, there is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, Hawkfeather. Thank you for your reading and consideration.

A Large Flock Of Small Birds: Essays, Rebecca Hanna Jacobson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Going Back Through, Cassandra Rae Lee

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

These are poems from between 2018 and 221 during which time the author continuously sought out romance, rearranged the furniture , and adopted animals. Amidst this unresolve, primary preoccupations were closeness, what we accrue+conceal, and the forces that guide poems into arrangement. Secondary preoccupations were dust, amnesia, distraction, conduits, and the seething junction of forces where contradiction can be held.

Out Into The Wilds: A Gay Marine's Journey Towards Self-Acceptance, David Harris Stalling

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

(A segment of a book-length project) Struggling with divorce, the death of his father and coming to terms with his sexuality, a former Force Recon Marine abandons the thought of suicide and decides, instead, to retreat to the wilds in a desperate attempt to make sense of thing. Hiking by himself for more than 1,000 miles, over three months, mostly off-trail through some of the most remote and wild country left in the United States, the author writes of his encounters with wolves, grizzlies, mountain lions and, more importantly, himself. "In the wilds," the author writes, "there are no societal-created …

End Of The Long Year, William Doehring

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Fighting The Tragedy Of The Commons (Poem), Olivia Romo

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Rainbow Writes: Peer-Led Creative Writing Groups’ Potential For Promoting 2slgbtq+ Youth Wellbeing, Ceilidh Harrison

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Though mainstream acceptance for the 2SLGBTQ+ community is on the rise, elevated risks of mental health challenges still pervade this community, particularly for youth growing up in this changing environment. Based on previous literature citing the benefits of creative interventions and youth autonomy, the current study sought to explore the implementation of an online, peer-led creative writing program as a possible means to increase emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing in 2SLGBTQ+ youth. Twenty self-identifying 2SLGBTQ+ youth from across Canada were recruited to form two 10-week, online peer-led creative writing groups titled “Rainbow Writes”. Based on Lerner et al.’s (2003) “Five …

Imaginary Things, Heather Gardewine

Masters Theses

Imaginary Things is a coming-of-age memoir about growing apart from one’s family and struggling with identity and independence. This story draws from predecessors in the family dysfunction subgenre of memoir, such as Educated by Tara Westover, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. The narrator tries to find her own identity in the things she loves while navigating familial opposition and rejection. “Imaginary things” such as films, plays, and video games become markers of identity and guide the reader through the story and towards growth, resolution, and sense of self.

Day Trips, Life In Camp, And Dogs: An Alaskan Memoir, Karen Reed

Masters Theses

Day Trips, Life in Camp, and Dogs: An Alaskan Memoir is a collection of essays reflecting the narrators immersion in life above the Arctic Circle.

Elegy For Ken, David Martine Aldridge

Mighty Pen Project Anthology & Archive

Poem about Ken Mick, who served as a Cobra Gunship pilot in the Vietnam War. Ken was a member of the Mighty Pen Project class until his sudden passing in November 2021. All of our MPP class members remember Ken as a loving and intelligent man who gave everything he had to serve America and his comrades.

We will always miss him.

Stories That Matter: Developing Media With Purpose, Chirag Patel

Theses and Dissertations

The following thesis project represents the culmination of studies in the M.F.A. in Cinematic Media Production graduate program by the student, Chirag Patel. It serves as a representation of knowledge gained during the program, in addition to a showcase of materials produced by the student to serve as a portfolio for future employment opportunities in the media industry. The thesis aims to provide a thorough understanding of the media production process by the student, who will present multiple projects designed to highlight the various steps in the production process, from story development through pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. Furthermore, each …

Navigating The Wreck: Writing Women’S Experience Of The Japanese Occupation Of Singapore. Salvaged From The Wreck: A Novel -And- Diving Into The Wreck: A Critical Essay, Dawn Nora Crabb

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis is in two parts. The first and major part consists of a historical novel followed, in part two, by an essay. The title of this thesis, “Navigating the Wreck”, refers metaphorically to the Fall of Singapore in 1942, the ensuing human tragedy unleashed on the people of Singapore and Malaya, and the literary and historical processes of exploring, interpreting and depicting the past. The Japanese occupation of Singapore has, to date, been described mostly by Western historians and former prisoners of war who have forged a predominant patriarchal narrative. In that narrative—despite the all-encompassing nature of the occupation …

Andrea Revised: Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist As Revolutionary By Martin Duberman, Phyllis Chesler

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.