Creative Writing Commons^™

Orpheus, Fall 2019: Fever, University Of Dayton

Orpheus: UD's Literary and Artistic Magazine

No abstract provided.

How About Noah?, India Worthy

Honors Projects

How About Noah? tries to bridge the gap between old picture books and today’s society by showing children the intersectionality between Noah’s identities as an African American and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. There are very few books that show this concept especially containing a strong female lead. Most stories are always about a boy wanting to be a girl instead of a girl who identifies as a male.

A Pint Of Dirt, Kristen Friesen

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This collection of poetry consists of 50 pieces focused on events and observations experienced by the author: a midwestern, middle-aged teacher, wife, and mother of three now-grown daughters. As much as it is an attempt to process and package the ordinary and unexplainable, it is also a study in metaphor, description, and the ways in which specificity of time and place can, hopefully, render a piece universal.

Advisor: Stacey Waite

I Was A Teenage Misanthrope: Essays, Lane E. Pybas

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The essays in this collection each explore to some extent my experience of mental illness, specifically clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder. In writing these essays, I wanted to experiment with different methods of representing the self as it undergoes an experience of mental illness. In the essay “I Was a Teenage Misanthrope,” for example, I portray myself in a somewhat humorous way, highlighting my antisocial behaviors for comic effect, in order to depict a period of my life that might otherwise have been too difficult to write about. In “Quiet Midwestern Bitch,” an essay about anxiety, I represent multiple …

Dirty Spoons, Renee Grasso

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

The Gland, Marissa N. Quiñonez

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Emotionally Compartmentalized Lovemaking Is Called Fucking, Kiel M. Gregory

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

To Gully, Daniel Fleischman

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Into The West, Miranda Phillips

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Spilled Coffee, Amy Middleton

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

I'M Awake, Renee Grasso

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

To My Room’S Future Tenant, Abigail Garcia

Honors Theses

To My Room’s Future Tenant is an original collection of poems accompanied by a critical preface.

Void, Bethany Fink

Honors Projects

This is a work of fiction. It forays into topics such as mental illness and how it affects relationships with friends and family. Trigger warnings include anorexia, self-harm, depression, and suicide ideation.

“An Aquatic Reverie” | Mallarmé’S Writing On Water And The Naming Of Waves, Clark Lunberry

English Faculty Research and Scholarship

At his home outside Paris, in Valvin, Stéphane Mallarmé spent much time on his small boat dreamily sailing upon the Seine, seeing this body of flowing water as a site for inspiration and inscription. Indeed, Mallarmé once confided to a friend, “I no longer write a poem without an aquatic reverie running through it,” and that, for him, poetry was like an “oar stroke,” and the sail, a “white page.” When Mallarmé was invited to lecture at Oxford University in 1894, he did not speak specifically of time spent on the water, his life on the Seine, but his own …

Secondson, Jonathan Blake Heaton

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

This author’s introduction is an analysis of graphic literature and poetry, and the combining of the two to create graphic poetry. Themes are explored of what it means to be a second son in a world permeated by traditional values, regarding the prominence of the first son.

This thesis was split into five sections: Finding My Story—in which the author explains how he came to the main narrative content behind Secondson; Finding My Themes—in which the author discusses the four themes that are included in Secondson and the inspiration received from outside works of poetry; Finding My Genre—in which the …

Glorious Indignities, Benito Salinas Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this creative work is to illustrate the relationship between the identity of the Rio Grande Valley as a whole, corporate control, immigration status, and interpersonal connection. This illustration is achieved through a series of interconnected short stories that culminate in a telling of a real-life event, the prison riot in the Willacy County Correctional Facility. This event has ramification for every character in the novel and for an entire county. This work attempts to simultaneously take a birds-eye view and microscopic examination of the events that lead up to the riot over the course of two and …

Another Day, Mary Dengler

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Miss Perception, Mary Dengler

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

For Joel On His 60th, Bob De Smith

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Spark, Shaun Stiemsma

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Magenta Sunset, David Schelhaas

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

The Shinging, Shaun Stiemsma

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Learning To Ride A Bike, Shaun Stiemsma

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Exposure, Mary Dengler

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Why Nebraska Is A Quintessential Movie About The American Midwest, Joshua Matthews

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

In Consideration Of Three Works Of Art, James C. Schaap

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Let Me Be Myself, Brandon Stettenbenz

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Let Me Be Myself is a collection of short stories, essays, oral history, and poems that deals with generational trauma, history, traveling, family, war, oppression, and healing. This project serves to inform, evoke understanding, lend perspective, and inspire others. It aims to help others understand the trauma of being born from a Holocaust surviving family, and its impact on somebody in modern day society. It explores the story of a first, second, and third generation Holocaust refugee. It connects a timeline of eighty years of trauma through violence and oppression, and a pursuit to find healing from Nazi Germany.

Traumatic Experiences Through The Queer Lens, Holden Guckenberg

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This is a collection of short stories based off of real trauma that LGBTQ+ individuals have experienced. I have interviewed seven people who identify within the LGBTQ+ community and listened to their traumatic stories. Based on their stories, I have written their accounts with trauma while expanding and taking creative freedom to better enunciate and bring-forth their stories. Trauma affects the LGBTQ+ community at a greater height than it does the general population. It’s important to recognize this fact so that we can support those people who have faced tremendous adversity in the form of trauma. In one form or …

To Love The Birds And The Places They’Ve Made Their Home: Poems From The Magic Valley, Alyssa B. Garza

Theses and Dissertations

The theme of the collection could be summed up in these lines written by Caryll Houselander in The Reed of God, “body and soul together give glory to God: the sharper the capacity for sorrow and joy, the greater the hallowing...Christ laid hold of the world with His human hands...He wed Himself to it. Our life is the response of the bride” (66–67). Our loving connection to every human person is our loving connection to Christ—charity is our bride-ness. The poems follow one bride through her journey, with the author’s environment (the Rio Grande Valley) coloring the verses, as …

Detention, Virginia Murray-Torres

Theses and Dissertations

A novel-in-verse about a teenage girl's detainment in an immigration center, separation from her family, and removal proceedings hearing with a 360 degree point of view from the people she interacts with, as well as her own.