Creative Writing Commons^™

Poem No. 129, May 2023, Huntsville Literary Association (Huntsvile, Ala.)

POEM

The Huntsville Literary Association was founded in 1967 to provide a community for writers, readers, and artists through workshops, readings, and educational programs. One of their key contributions is the literary magazine titled POEM which showcases original writings from both established and emerging writers. This issue features poems from various writers.

Limones, Margarita Vargas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A coming-of-age story of a teenage boyâ??s run-in with first love while attempting to distinguish himself amongst the cultural noise, all the while never losing sight of his dream to become a professional soccer player. Raised as a lime farmer, Natán is attuned to the beauty and bounty that nature has to offer and often returns to el río as a means to connect to the whispers of his heart.

Naturally: Memory In Verse, Heather L. Drouse

English Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a collection of free verse poetry that I have written that share a common theme of nature and family. This is a creative work that explores my personal memories and the feelings associated with them with the intention to spread joy and cause readers to reflect upon similar experiences they might have had as children. It consists of four major sections -- mother, father, love, and bridges -- and 18 poems, with "love" having 7 minor sections.

Confessional Poetry And The Human Experience: When Art Imitates Life, Caroline Winnenberg

Honors College Theses

The year is 1959. America sits in silent fear at the constant threat of nuclear warfare. The Red Scare had hit its peak just five years earlier with Joe McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt. Neighbors no longer trusted neighbors and marginalized groups have had enough. The LGBTQ+ community begins to unify, people of color march for civil rights, and women march for equal rights. The people are using their voices, but the fight for social justice is draining. The constant feelings of anger and depression are boiling over, searching for an outlet. Enter the author Robert Lowell and his volume Life …

From Far Gone, Back, Courtney Renae Causey

Graduate Thesis Collection

From Far Gone, Back is a short story collection that explores multigenerational families living in and around the changing landscape of Atlanta, GA. It asks what comes of the decisions we are forced to make for those around us and ourselves while surviving the best way we know how.

The Jubilant City Almanac: Stories, Azaria Brown

Graduate Thesis Collection

The Jubilant City Almanac is a collection of short stories set in the magical Jubilant City, a city founded by a group of Black women in 1736. These stories bridge the whimsical and magical with the realities of poverty, classicism, addiction, abuse and health disparities. “Got His Alligator” follows the journey of two codependent addicts as they try to get their fashion designs onto Jubilant City’s premiere drama, Girl, Please. The characters in “Carbon Copy” use a magical phone to bring Denzel Washington to the city. “Jeremiah the Conqueror” summons Black American folk legend, High John. THrough an exploration of …

Strange Beginnings, Lincoln-Abdullah Hasan El-Amin

Graduate Thesis Collection

"Strange Beginnings" is a short story collection consisting of four short stories. Some of these stories go together and some stand alone. All of them aim to evoke something in the reader, whether it be shock, joy, unsettledness, or something more.

Gleanlings, Natalie Stein

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The following poems were written in sentences formed by spilling milk onto objects of ritual significance. In the epic tradition of crumbs. Surfaces offered their chamberlets with the insistence of a larynx. In the shapes of: My Father, The Dead And Their Voices. There was milk, marionette drudgery, implacable lambs. Mice feature greatly– on toast, making bags. Mouse cream. Fragments of lost texts that were divined. A lullabye. These poems inhabit the formal and rhetorical devices of woolgathering, a loculus, and marginalia.

The Elegies, Hope Kelham

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Elegies imitates a carousel book in poetic form by layering the lyric with theater play. The collection oscillates its scenes between four discrete timelines — each interceding with the aftermath of future climate catastrophes. Utilizing stage direction, collage, and obsolete language, the text etches the relationship between three women: Bernadette, Jane, and Annette, and a fourth character, their child, Aliza. The poems click between each perspective, slewing forwards as though slide projector scenes, each relentlessly calling the other forth in memoriam. Characters mourn their earth, each other, and themselves while staring outwardly, often idly, into their presents.

August In The Dog Moon, Desmond Fuller

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This thesis consists of a novel in progress. August in the Dog Moon depicts a story about the strange, beautiful, and frightening things we find while exploring the liminal perspective in wild and abandoned places.

In constructing a long-form narrative, this thesis attempts to demonstrate the interworking of multiple narrators through a close third-person narration shared between three primary characters, two supporting characters, transcriptions of found recordings, and several chapters from an omniscient perspective. The intention being to explore the narrative of place through various perspectives and experiences. The accumulating effect being one of panoramic storytelling, increased instances of dramatic …

Not About You: A Novel, Hillary Colton

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

This novel-in-progress explores the complexities of single parenting and coming of age in a misogynistic society. Through the perspectives of a recently divided family, we are drawn into the coping mechanisms of characters who have been impacted by the cyclical nature of sexism, alcoholism, and abuse. Told through multiple points of view, the novel aims to explore questions of how internalized misogyny and generational trauma force a person to look at their complicity in the rippling effect of societal expectations, and whether it is possible to break free after a lifetime of trying to survive in a society rooted against …

The Downfall Of Daniel Fitzpatrick: A Creative Short Story, Renee Horsley

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Daniel grew up with humble beginnings in Starlight, Nebraska. His loving parents provided him and his four other siblings with as much as they could. Victoria grew up wealthy in a small town in Georgia but by fifth grade, Victoria would move to Starlight due to her father’s business proposition. Soon Daniel and Victoria’s worlds collided setting the way for the most epic and yet tragic love story to ever hit Starlight Nebraska. A creative short story that intertwines the disciplines of criminal justice, intergroup dialogue, psychology, and the law.

Act I, Scene 3 - Int. Bedroom, Victoria De Dios

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

The Sun Burns Until…, Caelan (Ellie) Davis

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.

Ripples, Nick White

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Laws Of Conversion, Matt Keller

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Up On A Star, Selinda Lawren

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Snapshot, Lili Gourley

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

Riverdirge, Frances Sharples

Gandy Dancer Archives

No abstract provided.

The Beast Lives Here, Kelli Kirkland

Honors Theses

A staple of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age, genre is a loss of innocence, often through trauma, so it is only natural for our protagonist to grasp at whatever coping mechanism may offer them comfort. As a coming-of-age novel, The Beast Lives Here asks: How does folklore and the supernatural interact with young, impressionable protagonists who are desperate to find explanations for their pain? The Beast Lives Here follows teenage narrator August (Aggie) Cain as she and her best friend move from junior to senior year of high school. Her excitement, however, is cut short by her best friend's lengthy trip …

Growing Up In Ana’S Shadow, Michaela Cahill, Gail Wronsky

Honors Thesis

In this collection, the poet explores how her personal struggles with mental health have shaped her development, relationships, experiences, and outlook on life. In poems that display a variety of stylistic forms and poetic techniques, the collection creatively sheds light on taboo topics including eating disorders, OCD, anxiety, and depression. Without making light of the sensitive subject matter, the poems reflect the author’s characteristic humor, self-satire, authenticity, and humility. Through metaphors, symbolism, and allegory, many draw subtle attention to the stigma around therapy, residential rehabilitation, and psychiatric prescriptions, in hopes of raising awareness for mental health treatment and removing the …

An Archaeology Of The Self: How Experience Shapes Poetry, Taylor Wells

Honors Theses

The blanket term “confessional poetry” is often used to describe verse that is widely personal and self-revealing in nature. Controversial even amongst its own founding poets, confessional poetry is an extension of lyricism that is associated with American figures who wrote personal poetry in the 1950s and 1960s. This group of poets consisted of Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and W. D. Snodgrass, among others. The creative portion of this thesis consists of a collection of original poetry inspired by confessional poetry. The introductory essay discusses the current state of poetry, the confessional movement, as well as the idea …

The Immortal Laugh Track: 20th Century Technology And Media Monoculture, Benjamin Sanford

Honors Theses

The movies, music, and TV shows of the late 20th century have far more staying power than the media that came before and after them. In the 21st century, we consume more media than ever, but we do not gather around the same small group of movies and TV shows in the way that people did decades ago. The M*A*S*H finale in 1983 was viewed by 121.6 million people, over half the population of the United States at that time; the finale of Game of Thrones, one of the most popular shows of the past decade, received around 15 million …

Identidem, And Other Lyric Essays, Jude Keef

Honors Theses

In Randon Billings Noble's introduction to A Harp in the Stars, she writes "Lyric essays require a kind of passion, a commitment to weirdness in the face of convention, a willingness to risk confusion, a comfort with outsider status. When I’m writing a lyric essay, I’m not worried about what it is or what to call it." I seek to play with this commitment, confusion, and comfort in my own work. This collection of lyric essays revolves around gender identity, the love and fear of labels, and how we, as queer people, can still feel nostalgic for our past.

A Tale From Esterad: An Examination Of The Political Power Of Fantasy, Koy Skinner

Honors Theses

The following is a short craft essay on the political nature of the fantasy genre followed by an original short story. The craft paper situates the reader in the discourse of fantasy being political or apolitical before shifting into a discussion of how Tolkien, Le Guin, and Sapkowski explore political ideas through their works. After, there is a brief section where the thought process going into the short story is explored before launching into the creative piece. The piece is five chapters long and explores a refugee crisis caused by a civil war in the fantasy world of Esterad.

The Red Deeps: A Retelling Of George Eliot's The Mill On The Floss., Emily Denton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The culminating project toward my Ph.D. in Humanities under the Public Arts and Letters track is a combination of creative and scholarly work composed of two parts: a retelling of George Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss and a critical introduction outlining the creative concerns to the project. The novel, The Red Deeps, reimagines The Mill on the Floss in the recent past—during the late 1980s in the Copper Basin, the former copper mines in Eastern Tennessee. The critical preface draws broader categories of adaptation, ecocriticism, and climate fiction and incorporates theorists from new southern and Appalachian studies …

“The Urgent Necessity For More Original Creative Works By Transgender And Gender Expansive Artists" Is Not The Title Of My Thesis., Alicia Fireel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a mix of personal reflection, academic research, and an examination of The Girl Crazy Queer and Other Fairy Tales, a play I wrote and performed in October of 2023, co-produced by The University of Louisville’s Department of Theatre Arts and Pandora Productions, a Louisville-based theatre company dedicated to Queer theatre. This thesis and the play mirror each other; both contemplate Queer experiences, Queer histories, Queer trauma, and Queer stories. In the thesis I accomplish this through examining four subjects: myself, my play, the connection between modes of storytelling and aspects of transgender Queerness, and the perils that …

There Could Be Light Here, Audrey Bowers

Graduate Thesis Collection

Poems about healing and hurting. The journey begins with a 14-year-old who is struggling with suicidal thoughts and ends with a 25-year-old learning how to live with bipolar 1 disorder. The poems focus on finding light in the darkness, one poem at a time.

Abort Mission: An Audio Drama, Maribel Salome Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations

The culmination of the audio drama and its critical introduction focuses on the current political climate regarding abortion rights, media manipulation, and governmental control as well as Latinx representation in art and media. The script follows two sisters on their mission to create an undetected, underground abortion service in a quickly evolving American dystopia.

Inspired by multiple works of both screenplays, audio dramas, and novels, my work is meant to inspire radical change to minorities in a world where hope is quickly fading.

The Siren Of San Francisco, Emily Gage

Whittier Scholars Program

The Siren of San Francisco is a story I have been interested in telling for the longest time focusing on the coming of age of the main character, Mia, and how she deals with change through gaining the power of shapeshifting. A lot of the graphic novel explores the relationships between Mia, her mom, and her close friends and how her relationships with them change during this transitional period.

The driving force behind this story was my enduring interest in relationships, identity, feminism, and how people can shape the people around them, including themselves. I approached this particular story from …