Creative Writing Commons^™

Safe Passage, John Molina

Theses and Dissertations

Safe Passage is a novel detailing life in the RGV. The novel is a bildungsroman that follows a group of friends and their experiences in the RGV. The novel sheds light on a region that is rarely examined, and uses flashbacks and flash forwards to show what it is like to age in the RGV.

The novel deals with life growing up near the Texas/Mexico border and relates experiences from the group of friends mentioned in the previous paragraph. The novel describes political and police corruption, drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, and assimilation along the Rio Grande Border. The novel …

The Gloria E. Anzaldúa Journey: Path To Conocimiento A Testimonio Of Queer Heroics, Veronica Solis

Theses and Dissertations

As an auto-historia testimonio, I approach my work from my experience with performance poetry where I used my personal experiences to express the continuum of gender through poetry. I also draw from Gloria Anzaldúa’s “path of conocimiento” as a framework for my narrative stories as queer rites of passage.

A Wood Comes Toward Dunsinane: The Synthesis Of Traditional And Constructivist Methodologies, Randall L. Kaplan

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Education professionals now favor Constructivist and project-based strategies for learning over Traditional methods, which include such frowned upon practices as rote memorization and recitation. The Constructivist approach is being taken to its natural apex by educators like Larry Rosenstock who have created Constructivist utopias such as High Tech High in San Diego, the school put under the microscope in the 2015 documentary film Most Likely to Succeed. Project-based, experiential units of study are effective, exciting, and edifying for both students and teachers. They promise to prepare students for the type of world they will inhabit, a world whose economy …

Life As I Know It: My Story Told Through Poetry, Leah T. Montoya

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This is a collection of poems and prose pieces, that cover love, loss, and everything in between.

Short Stories., Karley Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My creative thesis consists of a number of short stories. Each individual story stands alone, though all pieces in the project are doubtless connected by setting and syntax. Perhaps due to my own lack of imagination the stories take place, at least to some extent, in a small town. Though this may not be made explicit in every story, it can be deduced. Small town life, and particularly small town folk, are of interest to me; they are also what I know best. For example, Tom of “Neighbors” is a man living in a small town. The old man next …

Doorway To The Deep: Memoirs Of Enduring Endometriosis And Embracing Life After Loss, Carma Peña

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

No one is spared grief. Yet while it is universal in nature, it is painfully specific in experience. Many people describe grief in terms of water, and often refer to it as coming in waves, while others have drifted so far from the proverbial shore that they are drowning in it. Doorway to the Deep explores this concept through personal reflections and private diary and journal entries.

The story commences on December 17, 1993 with my first diary entry when I was eleven years old. After enduring many years of endometriosis, the story climaxes on May 12, 2014 with my …

Cacophony, Noha Elbadry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When I began writing Cacophony, I was living in Cairo, Egypt. I had graduated with a double major in both Journalism and English and Comparative Literature and had worked as an editor/journalist at one of Egypt’s leading newspapers, Al-Ahram, under the Middle East Politics beat. To this day, working as a journalist is by far the worst experience of my life. I hated it. Not only because most of the news which fell under my beat was often incredibly grim, but because I felt I was being taught to strip the art out of language, to use language to just …

Belt Of Pearls, Danielle Lee Henry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Belt of Pearls is a collection of poems concerned with the idea of home in both places and in

people. The speaker wrestles with dissatisfaction with home as a place of origin. The ties of

family, familiar landmarks, and old relationships are outgrown; the feeling of belonging becomes

associated with a lover instead. The poems attempt to locate relationships in geographical scenes

largely through the language of weather and flora. Images of light and the way it strikes a scene

are particularly important. Influences of the collection include Robert Hass, Tracy K. Smith, and

Deborah Landau.

Child Protection, Caroline Deluca

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Steadying, Sarah Steil

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Centre Island Baby, Jamison Murcott

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Fall, Grace Gilbert

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Red Oak, Juliana Schicho

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Sunday, Zarira Love

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Fifteen Ways Of Looking At A Privy, Chloe Forsell

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

911, Macaulay Glynn

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Everday Hauntings // Brigantine Beach Blues, Nicole Pero

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

18 Months Without A Head // Spider On My Headboard, Pam Haas

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Otro // America,, Diego Barcacel Peña

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

A Note, Emma Corwin

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

View From Atop Mount Herzl // Holiday, Isabel Owen

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Change, Grace Gilbert

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

64° 58' N, 21° 27' W @ 14:00 & 20 Y.O., Lizzie Pellegrino

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Table Of The Sun, Christine Bettis

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My creative thesis is a 48-page collection of poems titled Table of the Sun. Each poem is an intimate interrogation of varied ecological, romantic, and/or political disasters ranging from the Dakota Access Pipeline, cruel love, and Donald Trump. Some poems are reckonings, and others work to heal trauma, heartache, clinical illness, and supernatural afflictions like those experienced by the Tarantati of Puglia. Some are combative, it's true. Water is everywhere and it is multitudinous as an agent of destruction, cleansing, and transformation, and as a life-giver. The collection was influenced by readings, lectures, and courses I've experienced at UNLV, including …

Radio Spring, Kristian Louis Warren Einstman

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Abstract

This thesis, submitted for completion for the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, is a manuscript of poems entitled Radio Spring. The collection reckons with distance. The poems move through a domestic landscape, observing the ecstasy and despairs of a variety of relationships within a widespread community. Through subjective, sensual experience, the distinct movements of the collection explore the process of separation, lamenting loss, and the process of acclimation to the limits of distance. In the final movement the poems reach an acceptance that the members of any relationship must remain individual and that there is joy in …

Learning To Adapt, Kelly Elcock

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Learning to Adapt is a novel of slow-motion disaster. It tells the story of one-hit-wonder songwriter Sim Henrie, who has gone into hiding to gradually go broke, but then takes a job with a paint crew. It’s a meditation on celebrity, paranoia, and surveillance, but it’s also a gripping construction-worker drama.

If we were to analyze it the way one analyzes a dream, we would soon notice the whole thing fairly trembles with sexual undertones. Examples are too numerous to even begin to elucidate, but simply open the thing to any page and see if it isn’t true.

In addition …

Strange Wedding, Ariana Nicole Turiansky

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The thesis submitted for completion of the Master of Fine Arts - Creative Writing Program, titled Strange Wedding, is a collection of poems of approximately fifty pages long. It contains one section that allows the poems to approach the reader as one body.

This manuscript has been composed over the course of three years and has been inspired by conversations in workshop that discussed truth in poems, the power (and manipulation) of metaphor, and the use of event, or timing. These poems aim to be true, even when they depict a distorted perception or image. When they express doubt, it …

Self-Confessions, Brandy Dawn Clark

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The poems in this collection pay homage to the narrative tradition of poetry, in that they tell a story, use a narrator and characters. These poems, however, are the author’s own interpretation of the narrative tradition. The poems are not formal, are not written in metered verse, and do not rhyme. The poems in this collection are a celebration of narrative poetry, and of her poetic voice. They are a mixture of free verse and prose poems, and above all—they collectively tell a story: her story.

It’S Not About Brooklyn, Elee Maybelle Oak

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program has culminated into a collage form hybrid comprised of vignettes, poetry, and other creative works. The writing engages central themes, through the Queer gaze of the character Sissy. She became suspect at an early age because of her odd aptitudes along with a physical appearance that never fit. She dodged and at times embraced an identification as a sort of side show curiosity, and an intoxicated freak of gender, race, and talent. She survived physical and mental attacks. Then she blindly stepped …

Please Hold: Pushing The Comedic Movie Culture Forward, Lonanthony Phillip Parker

Theses and Dissertations

Growing up I always loved to watch movies. I was fascinated with the way the actors and actresses on the screen could spread joy, laughter, sadness, and anger, even making you fall in love by something they said or did. It has been my dream to have the same effect on people through the power of cinema as well. I am going to talk about multiple movies that I feel played a huge part in pushing the comedic movie culture forward. I want to break down and discuss three factors in these movies that I feel are vital when one …