Creative Writing Commons^™

A Melody Of Leaves, Adriana English

Emerging Writers

Finalist in the Creative Non-fiction category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This personal essay describes the writer's discovery of the benefits of tea after she makes a cup of it one evening.

The True Cost, Emily Garrett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The True Cost is a short novel set in a pre-dystopian society. The novel centers around three siblings: Lyle, Bridget, and Paul, along with their friend Reid. The group is living in the middle of an eighty-four-year war that has destroyed their society. Shortly before his murder, Jerry tells the gang to get out of Nork and to find the fabled DOCs. Throughout their journey to the DOCs the group fights through ambushes, deals with death and the destruction of war, all the while trying to figure out the truth behind the war.

Digital Disruption: The New York Times Asia-Pacific Writing Competition 2018, New York Times

Student Publications

This is a yearly writing competition organised by International New York Times (NYT). This year’s topic is “Digital Disruption” and SMU’s social sciences student Victoria Ivory Birrell was the winner in the University category. See her essay:

Ignore the Fluff, Technology hasn’t failed us and here’s why

Review Of The History Of Living Forever, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Freedom, Maria Cabrera Yannotta

Emerging Writers

First-place Winner in the Creative non-fiction category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This personal essay describes the writer's experiences on January 23, 2019, when a new president was sworn into office in Venezuela.

New Year's Gay, Jacob Eubanks

Emerging Writers

Second-place winner in the Creative Non-fiction category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This personal essay describes the writer's experiences that led to his coming out on New Year's Eve 2017.

A Lover's Heart - No, Mind, Marcos Gonzalez

Emerging Writers

Third-place winner in the Creative Non-fiction category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This essay describes the writer's personal reflections on love.

Why Do I Love Figure Skating? Good Question., Natalie Dayvault

Emerging Writers

Finalist in the Creative Non-fiction category of the 2019 Emerging Writers Contest. This personal essay describes the writer's experiences as an ice-skating athlete.

Card Not Accepted, Joslynn Howard

Calliope

No abstract provided.

Dishes, Delainey Willing

Calliope

No abstract provided.

The Waltz, Jennifer Morrow

Calliope

No abstract provided.

The Mountain Man I Hide In, Rida Fatima

Calliope

No abstract provided.

Inside Jokes, Livy Simms

Calliope

No abstract provided.

Eye Contact, Madeline C. Domingo

Calliope

No abstract provided.

The Natural Order, Isabel Acevedo

Calliope

No abstract provided.

Hearing/S: Will In The Carceral Archive, Kayla Morse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This long-form poetry project follows the human will — in this case the “criminal,” or captive will — as it is manhandled through an archive of reverends, wardens and superintendents narrating the future of prison reform. Drawing primarily from National Prison Association Conference archives between the years 1874 and 1895, these documents saturate the work with a will resistant but compelled towards subjugation by the state — as it appears within the text across forced labor economies, eugenic prison science that dictates starvation, classification, and isolation as the rule, the dehumanization of banal bureaucratic processes, the visceral and spectacular violence …

Existentialmd.Com: Building Towards An Embodied Internet Aesthetic, Natasha Ochshorn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

ExistentialMD.com is a website that aims to treat the body as an emotional and social subject in an online space that is purposefully bodied and fleshy. The website contrasts original creative nonfiction essays with a formal structure that alludes to the medical website WebMD. Mimicking WebMD’s symptom checker, which asks users to locate their discomfort with increasing specificity before suggesting conditions they might be suffering from, ExistentialMD uses a similar structure to yield results that are more exploratory than diagnostic, and which envision the body as a site of experience and emotionality. Form and content combine to create an …

The Birthday Boy And Other Boys, Charles Mccrory

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

"Name Her Reiko!": The Ikemiya Diaspora, Morgan Ikemiya

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This creative-nonfiction project encapsulates a Japanese family diaspora to America beginning in the late 1880s. Through short stories, poems, and monologues, the author expresses familial struggles such as living in a foreign land and being Japanese in White America. The author reflects on her grandparents' time in the Japanese internment camps where they faced hardship and hegemonic oppression as well as her father's experience of growing up Japanese-American in Los Angeles. The stories weave together history, hardship, and race to create a unique diaspora story.

The Migrant Times, Jessenya Guerra

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This senior capstone newspaper shows how the Mexican diaspora has become integrated into American culture.

1999 Aaa Jrpg Quality And How A 2019 Indie-Game Developer Can Meet It, Kailynn Haskell-Harbert

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper is a delve into 1999 JRPG AAA video games and how small developers can make something of similar quality with contemporary technology. This is explored by using Final Fantasy VIII and Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete as a 1999 AAA standard, then comparing that standard to modern indie-games as well as my own experience in indie-game development. The ultimate goal of the paper is to prove that small indie-game studios can create 1999 AAA quality JRPGs with relatively minimal investment.

This To Which We've Come., Holly Tabor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection of works explores the linkages between moments, the connective thread that accumulates over time to create for each of us a unique present. The title, “This to Which We’ve Come,” attempts to convey that each moment is a point of arrival colored by the smallest of temporal fibers, our most interior histories that stretch and bend and fold back onto themselves when the present forces us into action, or inaction. Through these characters and their stories, I attempt to examine that moment of arrival. A secondary thread explored in this collection is the idea that humans are still …

These Places We Walk : Stories Of Mental Illness In American Society., Rachel Grace Trimble

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This paper examines research on mental illness and mental health literacy as well as an examination of literary elements in interlinked stories in order to write a linked collection of five short stories about mental illnesses. Depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

H.E.L.P : A Creative Exercise In Feminism And The Buddy Comedy., Bayne M. Lutz

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This screenplay attempts to reconcile the author's confusion on how to best enact social progress by examining and satirizing several competing feminist movements. Set in an off-kilter Los Angeles, the comedy tracks Alivia, a recent PhD grad who cannot leverage her education toward finding a job. In desperation, she joins a radical organization called the H.E.L.P. (Heroines for the Elimination of Loathsome Professors), which encourages her to take matters into her own hands.

Inverting tropes from buddy comedies, cop-shows, ghost stories, and Bond movies, the screenplay grapples with how women are meant to break the glass ceiling and it may …

The Roxy Letters, Mary Pauline Lowry

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Roxy Letters is a comedic written in letters from Roxy—an undersexed, underemployed, well-educated, and verbose twenty-something working at the deli of the flagship Whole Foods in Austin, TX—to her ex-boyfriend Everett who is living with her, but is failing to pay rent while succeeding in totally ruining her mojo!

As Roxy struggles to raise herself from her artistic, romantic, and employment slumps, she finds a new best friend in Artemis, who is a burlesque dancing, girl goddess, and huntress of men. Roxy battles with the meth heads who live next door; reluctantly tries out a sex cult focused on …

Three Quarters, Michael Mckee Green

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Three Quarters makes retrospection into prospection. Following its speaker from the near-present to the near-past, the text imposes a spiritual and affective pilgrimage onto nine months (three quarters of a year) of his life. Codas, pieces of parataxis, and grammatical slippages color and heighten the experiences of a young man coming to terms with himself by reliving what’s come.

Murder Pass: Tackling Toxic Masculinity Through Musical Comedy, Chad Nowlan

Honors College Theses

The author discusses the process of co-writing a full-length musical that addresses issues of toxic masculinity and sexism.

Floating Head Touching Earth, Carrieann Cahall

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Floating Head Touching Earth is a collection of short stories centered on themes of identity, historical and intergenerational trauma, familial duty, and self-discovery delivered through prose that is often tinged with surreal or strange elements. Inspired by the craft of writers like Flannery O’Connor and Aimee Bender, my work seeks to explore the power that seemingly small or forgotten experiences can have on one’s psyche in ways that ripple throughout a lifetime. The stories are organized in a manner that track an unraveling of the body, history, relationships and the minds of its various protagonists. The Buddhist mudra, or gesture, …

Literal Dope, Frank Johnson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Literal Dope draws from the rich literary traditions of hip-hop and the broader umbrella of Black American art traditions. It seems to me that perhaps the best way to honor the language which raised me, taught me, and literally saved my life is to explore it, praise it, weaponize it when necessary, and deploy it as a tool for Black liberation. The work’s theory is deeply informed by bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and a number of Black feminist artists. The world needs Black folks—especially Black men—who know love; who know how to love each other and know they …

Forget Me Not & Other Stories, Zach Wilson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My thesis manuscript Forget Me Not & Other Stories is composed of several short stories and the first section of a novel. The first drafts of these stories were written during my first and second years in the program while my primary focus this semester has been the novel. I believe this thesis reflects my growth as both a writer and critical reader of fiction as a result of my time here. Much of the work included here began as assignments for a creative class, including an imitation of Marilyn Robinson’s’ Gilead written for Professor Doug Unger’s Forms of Fiction. …