Creative Writing Commons^™

Voice And Student Engagement With Writing: Integrating Perspective, Personality, And Style, Sara S. Martin

English Dissertations

The rise of generative AI has many teachers worried about the future of writing classes and students’ desire to learn. However, instructors can motivate students to write by valuing what AI can never replace: their voices. Previous definitions of voice took the concept for granted and left it either vague or reductive, unhelpful for structured lessons. I propose a new, more teachable definition of voice as perspective, personality, and style. Perspective takes priority because it belongs solely to the individual and the unrepeatable moment of composition. Personality infuses passages with emotion, forming a bond between author and reader. Style, the …

Dear Vincent, James H. Stone Iv

Playwriting (MFA) Theses

Dear Vincent is a play written for J. Harvey Stone’s MFA in Playwriting from Hollins University. The play is inspired by the life of Vincent van Gogh and his letters with his brother Theodore. The artist Vincent van Gogh was an avid writer to his brother Theodore. This play is inspired by, but not dictated by, the letters Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother. Connected by hymns in Act I and by the news of the 1980s in Act II, this Vincent lives through his letters as well but ultimately has to make a decision regarding this life in …

By The Light, Desiree Galamgam

CMC Senior Theses

On the island of Helios, the sun god, a water nymph finds comfort tending to the flora along  riverbanks. Clytie avoids her oceanid sisters’ poisonous proclivities. Modeling herself after the sun god’s incessant responsibilities, she spends her existence working. Only taking breaks to perch herself at the top of her alcove’s hill to watch Helios drive his chariot to rise and set the sun, she sees him as the epitome of perfection and freedom.

Her tranquil life is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Helios himself at the footsteps of her isolated cave. Clytie begins to feel new emotions as …

Unmasked And Unprotected: An Autistic Poet's Journey Of Imperfect Confession, Cynthia Short

Theses and Dissertations

Cynthia Short’s thesis analyzes the consumption and contortion of neurodivergent experience across the clinical, personal, and artistic stages. Combining intersectional memoir with clinical research, traditional poetics, and spoken word experience, she weaves a first-person narrative of consumption and redefinition by systems that did not understand her. Yet, she argues that imperfect confession -done without self-knowledge, resources, or proper self-worth to resist consumption – still has its place. Her collection of twenty-nine self-authored poems serves as a testament to the growth her imperfect confession allowed, outlining her struggles with identity, clinical experimentation and economic survival in a world not meant for …

The Essence Of The Heart: Layered Human Experience In Eva Jessye’S My Spirituals, Jessica Brunet

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Much of the spiritual repertory has been transcribed as documentation of purely melodic and lyrical content, and many songs have been arranged by some of the greatest figures in twentieth- and twenty-first century music history, including Harry T. Burleigh, Hall Johnson, Margaret Bonds, and Jacqueline B. Hairston. On this roster of luminaries is Dr. Eva Jessye (1895-1992).

If Eva Jessye is remembered at all, it is typically in the context of her role as choral director for the original production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935). Among a litany of other accomplishments, however, Dr. Jessye also published a collection of …

Picture Frame, Bryan Wang

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 8

Storm, Claire Davis

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 7

My Lunch With Robert Morris, A Signer Of The Declaration Of Independence, Sarah Irani

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 8

Stories Are Weird, Hadley Kirschner

Voice/Craft

Grade 8

New Meaning Of Hope, Avery Wilcoxon

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 8

A One Woman Voyage, Annabelle Rafferty

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 8

Blooming Pride, Elli Hubner

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 8

Meera's Mini Musings: A Collection, Meera Dande

Voice/Craft

Age 12, Grade 8

Literary Essay—Ghost By Jason Reynolds, Rico Matsumoto

Voice/Craft

Age 12, Grade 7

Fear, Gwen Keely

Voice/Craft

Age 13, Grade 8

See You In The Cosmos Literary Essay, Eugenia Chatalbasheva

Voice/Craft

Grade 8

Bad Idea, Evan Reifsteck

Voice/Craft

Age 15, Grade 9

The Alchemist, Suah Won

Voice/Craft

No abstract provided.

Sh! You're Not Alone, Waylon Buchanan

Voice/Craft

Age 14, Grade 9

War Bird, Odin Auteberry

Voice/Craft

Age 14, Grade 9

Legend Of The White Bison, Garrett Hurley

Voice/Craft

Age 14, Grade 8

Why Should You Try Jarling's Custard Cup?, Elijah Thrapp

Voice/Craft

Grade 8

Where I'M From, Alexandria Black

Voice/Craft

Age 12, Grade 6

Milk Tooth, 2026, Casina Alderson, Eddie Anderson, Katherine Eliason, Liz Fisher, Jon Geimer, Sadie House, Hannah Lewis, Eshetu Loer, Nazia Matt, Edwin Mayo, Hannah Pfeiffer, Adam Roloff, Kaitlyn Seibel, Sydney Skoglund, Griffin Wilson, Luke Yartz

Milk Tooth

"Writings by Bemidji State University Students". Sponsored by the Bemidji State University English Department.

Modernism’S Wild Child: The Interplay Of Modernist And Children’S Literature, Rachel Riffel

All Master's Theses

Within literary criticism, American and British modernism are often characterized by the disillusioned writers and creators who established an elitist literary community during the early 20^th century. This period is also distinguished by the Harlem Renaissance highlighting Black art, culture, and writing. Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps are well-known for contributing core texts to modernism and the Harlem Renaissance that expressed existential themes and developed experimental techniques. What many readers don’t know, however, is that these authors and many other contemporaries wrote stories and poetry for children. In this thesis, I explore the children’s …

Las Pintas Inverview Project 2026, Beth Gulley, Luzma Alvarez, Lacey Andrews, Damien Duncan, Mariah Garman, Brenda Lofton, Alyssa Roland, Hero Sanner, Asja Thompson, Athena Gonzalez, Lee Martin, Samantha Miller, Lucy Sas

The Las Pintas Collection

Acknowledgements

Dear Reader,

This collection is the result of JCCC students’ efforts to reflect on the college’s decades long relationship with Centro Integral Comunitario (CIC) in Las Pintas, Mexico. Before they left on the trip, each student interviewed someone from JCCC who had traveled with the college to Las Pintas in the past. The first section of this book includes what students learned from their pre-departure interviews.

In the second part of this book, students wrote about what they learned from interviewing people who they met in Las Pintas. While these interviews were conducted in Spanish, the students wrote their …

Juguete, Lilianet Brintrup Hertling

Fiction and Poetry

Lilianet Brintrup Hertling es una poeta de sólida trayectoria y conocida capacidad expresiva. Es también una viajera empecinada, oriunda del sur de Chile que vive ahora en la otra punta del continente, y científica curiosa y sensible. Todo ello se entrelaza delicadamente en su próximo libro Juguete, donde viajamos con los juguetes, sus juguetes, por geografías, por ontologías y muy especialmente por capas de tiempo que marcan, a través de la memoria, el pasaje de la niñez a la adultez, o quizás a la inversa: una visita a la infancia desde el ahora adulto. Los lectores, ubicados también en este …

Ladybug Go!, Lauren Cohn-Sarabia, Mira Eagle

Fiction and Poetry

Ladybug Go! is a story about a little ladybug that gets caught up in a big race. The story is an actual telling of events that occurred for Lauren’s family at the Kinetic Grand Championship Race 20 years ago.

For over 50 years, on Memorial Day weekend, Humboldt County, CA has hosted the Kinetic Grand Championship. It’s the granddaddy of the kinetic races that sees all kinds of crazy bi-peddled contraptions move over land, sand and water. On the first day the completion begins on the Arcata Plaza with all sorts of pageantry as they cross the starting line and …

The Creative Nonfiction Story, Lee Gutkind

Literary History: The Creative Nonfiction Story

How a little magazine defied resistance and ridicule and helped launch the true-story revolution.

Into Me See: Visibility, Recognition, And The Need To Be Seen In Kazuo Ishiguro’S Never Let Me Go, Vicki L. Wine Carney

Anthós

While critical scholarship on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go often emphasizes bioethics, transhumanism, and the commodification of life, this lens overlooks the novel’s profound engagement with the psychological necessity of visibility. This paper argues that the tragedy of the clones is fundamentally a crisis of recognition, where invisibility is not incidental but structurally produced to facilitate exploitation. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s concept of the "Form of Utility" and Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition, this study examines how systemic indoctrination and objectification deny the clones their innate humanity to soothe the conscience of the "normals." Furthermore, it analyzes the characters’ …