Creative Writing Commons^™

Shaping Character: The Role Of Mythology In Society, Jaclyn Weist

Masters Theses

Throughout history, man has told stories. Some stories were written on walls, tablets, or bits of parchment. Others have been passed down to posterity through oral tradition. Every culture worldwide has a rich tapestry of legends and myths. It is my intent to demonstrate that these stories use the tools of character development within their various plot lines to both express and shape beliefs, superstitions, and life lessons. Whether they are religious in nature or simply trying to make sense of the world, these stories, myths, and legends have played a part in shaping society into what it is today.

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

AQ Hanna [dream journal]; AQ Hanna [diario de sueños]; AQ Hanna [in the car, alone], AQ Hanna [June]; AQ Hannah [July]; Cade Campbell [Young Love]; Cade Campbell [Amor Juvenil]; Hannah Smith [Anesthetic Love Song]; Hannah Smith [Canción de Amor Anestesiada]; Claire Webb [i'm sorry all you bath lovers]; Claire Webb [Moonwalker]; Claire Webb [Serenity]; Claire Webb [I wasn't There the Night He Died]; Elizabeth Carpenter [Constellations]; Elizabeth Carpenter [On This Farm]; Elizabeth Carpenter [In Their Narrative]; Rachel Kincaid [Morning Glories]; Ben Bilderback [Edward Hopper's Nighthawks]; L.C. Francis [Diary of a Trans Girl]; L.R. Tipton [Thank You]; L.R. Tipton [I Miss …

Falling Down The Rabbit Hole: World Building In Ya Literature, Claire Webb

Undergraduate Honors Theses

World building is a key component to many young adult novels, but what is world building and what are some different styles and techniques that authors use when constructing fictional universes? In this thesis, Falling Down the Rabbit Hole: World Building Techniques in YA Literature, I will examine Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865), The Princess Bride by William Goldman (1973), and my own unpublished novel, The Sun Kingdom, to compare different techniques and styles of world building. These works will be explored through the aspect of world building, focusing specifically on the importance of the geography, language, …

Hailey's Hearing Aids, Hailey Marie Garcia

Whittier Scholars Program

Individuals from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are likely to experience more anxiety and depression due to defective cognitive, social, communicational, and emotional skills (Azizi et al., 2019). The word “disability” is embedded with historical negative connotations with phrases such as “deaf and dumb” because if they were deaf or mute then they were automatically labeled as inferior (Horovitz, 2007). Since the 18th century, the DHH community has been seen as incapable, even inhuman, hence the development of emotional deficiencies that bleed into one’s perception of society and their self esteem (Gallaudet, 1886).

How do you navigate a hearing world …

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

Matthew Powers [Uncle Ed]; Samantha Matney [The Secret Heart: A Memoir of My Grandfather Thurman Cooper’s Life]; Amara Bunten [Ode to Pudding Tane: A Life Well Lived and Poem to Commemorate It]; Amara Bunten [Storyteller]; Tuck Ledbetter [Autumn in Fall Branch, Tennessee]; Madison Stacey [Ultraviolet Thoughts]; Emily Wilson [Lover’s Quarrel]; Zoe Williford [they don’t like you when you’re sad]; AQ Hanna [half-lives]; Claire Webb [Bachata Songs]; Hannah Smith [A Comprehensive Study on Loneliness & the Tide]; Ethan Walker [the divine masculine]; Briana Presley [My Barbies are Disfigured, Not Dismembered]; Claire Webb [The Remnants of Julia Davis]; Kelsey Guy [Build Up, …

Theory Of Care, Gabriella Ann Graceffo

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

With a backdrop of the body and its inner forms, Theory of Care is a collection of poems and lyric excerpts that explores themes of queer sexuality, physical and mental health, etymology, desire, and physicality. It coheres moments of internal reckoning with an exploration of how trauma lives in the body, particularly the queer femme body. By accessing various landscapes including the medical sphere, family dynamics, and the social environments of the South, the collection grapples with different vernaculars to question how the language used to discuss (or dismiss) trauma dramatically alters the perception of those experiences.

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

The Kiss Turns: A Play On Aural Manor, Meredith Higgins

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Kiss Turns: A Play on Aural Manor is a poetic work that explores the nature of being and selfhood as they are expressed and modulated through the hearing, speaking, and writing of language. The Manor and surrounding Grounds here are presented as a fluid junk-mosaic: colorful, clamoring, thing-filled, magical, and on the move. Seven characters reside on the Manor’s property and live out their respective longings and loves, apprehending horror, tragedy, abundance, and the possibility of play through accepting and collaborating with the unknown depths of being.

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

Emily Price [Editor’s Note]; Micheal Bumgarner [Artist’s Statement]; Emrie Gilbert [“The Sins of the Fathers Visited upon the Children,” or How I Lived More-or-Less Openly Queer in the Southern Baptist Church]; Korbin Rhue [Playing Gods: An Aspiring Author’s Guide to Creating a Fantasy World That Feels Real to Your Readers]; Kylee Phalen [Prodigal Daughter: A Queer Christian’s Open Letter to the Church]; Ethan Walker [Hit]; Wendy Gourley [Seeing in the Dark]; Elias Murphy [Who I Am]; Andy Demczuk [Lesdiguières]; Amara Bunten [Method Acting]; Sappho Stanley [Like a Bosch]; Wendy Gourley [Butterflies]; Courtney Harvey [roolF eht no sI gniR ehThe Ring …

The Window To The Soul, Erica Bolding

Emerging Writers

This essay surveys the idea of "tone" and all of its complexities, including a focus on its relations to mental health conditions such as depression. Intertwined with personal memoir, research, and examples from social media, the essay unravels a difficult and under-discussed issue that surrounds tone. The essay also asks unconventional questions that hope to stir readers' thinking, such as: Is raising one’s voice always bad? Are our screams telling us something else?

Yo Soy Rumano (I Am Romanian): An Autobiography Exploring The Effects Of Memory And Trauma On The Formation Of The Self, Andrei Bucaloiu

Honors Theses

I came to the United States from Romania with my parents when I was two years old. This moment of cultural, linguistic, and geographic separation occurred before I was able to consciously recall it, yet it constitutes a traumatic experience, in the Freudian and Lacanian sense, that defines my positionality and serves as a primary space in which I seek to develop who I am. However, regardless of how much I have developed my ability to communicate in English, it is not the language of my emotional affect. At the same time, profound expression in Romanian is not possible for …

The Circle Will Be Unbroken, Shelby Gesch

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Etsu Department Of Literature Of Language

The Mockingbird

Chris Walonski [Superstition]; translation by Cindy Castle [Superstición]; Leticia Pizzino [Unlocking Hearts]; Amara Bunten [Deep River, Shallow Water]; Holly Todaro [Salvatore Elboro]; translation by Allen C. López [Salvatore Elboro]; Courtney Harvey [A Letter]; Cassie Selleck [Past Time]; translation by Rachel Reid [Pasa Tiempo]; Rhea Norris [Lying in Plain Sight: Deception through an Eating Disorder Lens]; Michelle Bravender [Life Half Lived]; Diane Mallett-Birkitt [I Am That Mom]; Donna Paulson [Barren Voices]; Zach Hicks [Amnion]; Emily Price [beestings]; Mallory Spisak [Annihilations]; Emily Price [ars protestor]; Jessica Dunker [Short Supply]

A Nameless Blue, Francis (Elle) Lawson Mitchell

Senior Projects Spring 2021

A Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College, Written Arts. A science fiction novel about queerness, disability, the heart and the body. The novel considers where the biological and the mechanical meet, and where the body intersects with relationships of power, the state, production and religion.

Witless, Irritating, Recurring Words, David Schelhaas

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Babble About Autism Talks Too Much, Adam J. Wolfond

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Two poems by Adam Wolfond, "How" and "Babble About Autism Talks Too Much" (2020) "language" autism differently, questioning the way neurotypicality asserts authority over the meaning and experiences of autistic people. Wolfond is a non-speaking writer who is the first and youngest poet to be published by poets.org. He is a public text-to-speech presenter, collaborator on academic projects, an artist who has previously exhibited in Toronto, Canada and has published two books of poetry with Unrestricted Interest. His interest lies in movement, relation, affect and language.

Snowstorm In Southern Tlön, Joshua T. Parks

The Hilltop Review

This is a wintry poem inspired by the nounless language of Jorge Luis Borges's fictional planet Tlön. It describes a snowstorm using only verbal forms and function words. It also hints at the timelessness of Tlön's philosophical idealism and the tendency of nature to disregard human boundaries.

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

Cheston Axton [Dropping One Hundred and Twenty Feet in Four Seconds]; Matthew Bennett [Meltdown #?]; Jessica Dunker [Border of Success]; Nancy Jane Earnest [Roan Mountain Rain]; Scottie Garber-Roberts [Scenes in the Life of a Modern Woman]; Haley Grindstaff [Ad Astra]; G. Johnson [The Pool]; Abby N. Lewis [4th of July; Someone’s in the Attic]; Alex Mauger [Gollum Sonnet]; Dillon McCroskey [Do You Hear the Creek Talking?; Fever Dream]; Harley Mercadal [A Contemporary Experience of Death; A Trailer’s Secret; Grad School Conversations; Una experiencia contemporaránea de la muerte; Unforgiven]; William Rieppe Moore [Night Watch; The scent of early morning coffee clouds …

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

A Citrus Wildfire, Mark Anthony Lopez

Theses and Dissertations

An American Dream forged by greed. A family caught in the middle of a race war. A young boy trying to learn how to be a man. A Citrus Wildfire is a fiction novella that tells the story of a Mexican family struggling to survive in the Rio Grande Valley after their only source of income burns down, and the lengths they must go to in order to get the life they were promised.

A small preface from the author proceeds the work. This novella is inspired by many different authors and educators, as well as the Rio Grande Valley …

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

Sam Campbell [Nightwatchers; Waffle House]; Brynne Carlisle [Better to be Pissed Off, Than to be Pissed On]; Elizabeth Chapman [Communication]; Megan Cruey [Wearing Hajib in London: The Tale of a Bond Formed Abroad]; Jessica Dunker [The Sound of Color]; Nancy Jane Earnest [Conjuring; Measures of Necessity]; Olivia Ellis [Jungle Fever]; Matthew LA Gilbert [A Conversation With Tamara Baxter]; Lia Hall [A Bookish Love]; Amber Howard [Eve’N Adam]; Kayla Ireson [The Rebuff of Discovery]; Abby Lewis [0.6 Inches; Over the Shoulder of the Moon; Sentries of the Cemetery]; Dillon McCroskey [Paralysis Under Popcorn Ceilings]; Micah McCrotty [Cartography; The Grey Hawk]; Rieppe …

Bad Harvest, Dzvinia Orlowsky

English Faculty Publications

This powerful sixth collection of poetry is like some kind of new world Genesis singing its stories with lyric, grace, comic intuition and tragic force. The poet leads us over the remains of drought, along empty riverbeds that run parallel to failure and death, but then twists to capture a more elusive truth, pluck one last grain to hold, redeeming a bad harvest to sow hope in this soiled world. Bad Harvest burns like revelation.

Crossing Borders: Writers Writing Their Lives Gws 492, Mary Macdonald

Library Impact Statements

No abstract provided.

Complete Issue

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

The complete issue 1 of volume 8, Landscapes Journal.

Dear Me, Hannah Patricia Farley

MSU Graduate Theses

This collection of fiction includes short stories and a partial novella. A critical introduction provides background on the author’s writing and a theoretical framework as it pertains to the fiction highlighted in this thesis. The works presented explore aspects of genre fiction including magical realism, absurdism, and the bildungsroman. The partial novella relies heavily on epistolary form, confessional style entries, and continuous stream of action. The main characters of the included works serve as focal points which address themes of family life, addiction, mental illness, minority languages, and voice.

Foreword To Visual Imagery, Metadata, And Multimodal Literacies Across The Curriculum, Jonas Zdanys

English Faculty Publications

As one of those educated to consider the primacy of the word – written and spoken – as the vehicle for creating and transferring knowledge, I am often surprised by the evidence around me that we live in a world inwhich technological devices of variousshapes and sizes have blunted the reliance on the layerings of words to define and engage in favor of various shortcuts to knowledge. Complexity of expression in the textures of language has given way, because of those devices and their applications, to abbreviations, neologisms, emojis, deliberate misspellings, instagrams, tweets, and other avenues of expression that focus …

The Mockingbird, Department Of Art And Design, East Tennessee State University, Department Of Literature And Language, East Tennessee State University

The Mockingbird

Jillian Bailey [Faded]; Taylor Campbell [Move to Jupiter]; Elizabeth Chapman [Sepsis]; Arizona Clawson [13%; November]; Thomas Chase Clayton [Alcohol, Love, and Other Things that Kill You]; Alexandria Craft [Electric Love; Watauga Lake in Autumn]; Brooke Day [Seated and Lovely]; Kelly Dorton [Alternative Quotes]; Nancy Jane Earnest [Home before Dark (Autumn Reflections along I-26)]; Jeremy Fahn [Close Distance; Meaningless Stare]; Seth Grindstaff [Letter to Dreamer]; Kayla Hackney [The Imposter]; Bardley Hartsell [August Chapel]; Zöe Hester [MOASS]; Janice Hornburg [October Shower; Orogeny]; Mark Hutton [Old South]; Emily Johnson [Delicacy]; Rachel Nicole Lawson [Everystudent]; Emily Williams McElroy [Sacrament]; Andrew Miller [A Field and …

Les Mots Justes And Other Things Impossible To Find, Katherine Tasseff

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Communication can be hard enough when you’re speaking in your native tongue, but throw in a second language and something’s sure to get lost in translation. In this creative nonfiction piece, I trace my real-life journey from tongue-tied homebody to bilingual voyageuse over the stepping stones of four chapters, with each chapter linked by the themes of language and communication. In the first half of the project, a unique job offer brings love, friendship, and plenty of misunderstanding into my humdrum life, and inspires me to pick up a language that broadens my personal and academic horizons. In the …

In His Wake: Applying Life's Truths In Fiction, Joseph M. Balderas

Theses and Dissertations

The culmination of the creative work and its introduction attempt to delve into the psyche of what it means to lose someone you love. The screenplay explores the grieving process and the coping mechanisms that accompanies it, with an examination on how far some people are willing to go for closure.

To reach my conclusions, I draw from my own life experience, the experiences of others, and a fine amount of research. It also means to shed light on the impermanent mental strain that chaperon’s grief.

Cenzontle/Mockingbird: Empowerment Through Mimicry, Daniel Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

My collection is a polythetic assortment of poetry, prose poetry, monologue and drama that serves as a polyglottic exhibition of empowerment through mimicry. Like a mockingbird, whom the Aztecs call “cenzontle” in their Nahuatl tongue, my writer’s voice is polyvoiced. I include in this collection an eclectic variety of voices: personas, languages, forms, styles, and identities—often mixing them, in part to entertain and in part to challenge my boundaries as a writer, to stretch my vocal chords, so to speak, but also in part to challenge the lingering prejudice against such mestizaje—or meeting and mixing of cultures (and also voices)—and …