Fiction Commons^™

Sadie Jane, Esther French

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Sadie Jane is a novella set in the town of Gypsum, a fictional location in rural Kentucky. The introduction covers the inspiration for the novella, which is based on Southern storytelling traditions and features the adventures of Sadie Jane, an independent octogenarian who returns to her hometown after many years. Sadie experiences the internal challenges of regrets and grief as well as the external challenges of busybodies and car thieves before finding her place in the community.

Fictions Of Sexuality, Emelyn Schaeffer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

I conducted a Creative Independent Study Project and wrote two short stories that include themes of women’s sexual desire/pleasure, sexual debuts, masturbation, discoveries, and understandings of one’s sexuality. Because women receive so many messages about keeping their chastity and so few about pursuing the pleasures sex can provide, the opportunities to promote the exploration of women’s sexual desire cannot be missed. To write my stories and answer my research question, I read and watched a variety of both academic and creative materials. I wanted to do this work because these are the stories I needed in high school when I …

From The Shire To The Somme: Comparing Military Themes In The Hobbit And Up To Mamtez, Alexander M. Remington

Student Publications

The Hobbit, by J.R.R Tolkien, tells the story of the titular Bilbo Baggins who goes on an adventure to help a band of dwarves retake their home from a dragon. Throughout the adventure, Bilbo and the dwarves endure many hardships similar to those of a British soldier fighting on the western front in the First World War. These hardships are especially comparable to Llewelyn Wyn Griffith's World War One experience described in his book Up to Mametz. Military themes of enforced adventure, constant and escalating danger, comradeship, and the devastation of war can also be found in both the Hobbit …

“We Are The Walking Dead”: Morality In Robert Kirkman’S Comics Series, Amy L. Jacobs

Masters Theses

Despite widespread cultural success, Robert Kirkman’s comics series, The Walking Dead, has received little critical attention in the literary canon. The limited critical attention it has received fails to provide an in-depth examination of the work’s morality. This could be a result of the ever-present influence of Frederic Wertham’s claims in his 1954 work, Seduction of the Innocent. However, when viewed through the frameworks provided by John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction and Wayne C. Booth’s The Company We Keep, Kirkman’s zombie narrative exhibits morality in multi-layered and complex ways with every turn of the page. Through the …

Kentuckiana, And A Dash Of Cambodia: A Collection Of Short Stories, Brodie Lee Gress

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The following is a collection of five short stories set in regions familiar to me: “Dewberry Park,” “YouLead,” and “The Color Violet” in Indiana; “Mens Rea” in Kentucky; and “Tory Ride” in Cambodia. Gay identity plays a role in many of these stories, and other themes explored include family, region, socioeconomics, gender, mentality, and change. These stories are concerned with people on the brink, failing and surviving all the same. Some of them are intended to weigh, and some to satirize. I hope they all nick their readers.

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

“To Be Men, Not Destroyers”: Developing Dabrowskian Personalities In Ezra Pound’S The Cantos And Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Michelle A. Nicholson

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Kazimierz Dabrowski’s psychological theory of positive disintegration is a lesser known theory of personality development that offers an alternative critical perspective of literature. It provides a framework for the characterization of postmodern protagonists who move beyond heroic indoctrination to construct their own self-organized, autonomous identities. Ezra Pound’s The Cantos captures the speaker-poet’s extensive process of inner conflict, providing a unique opportunity to track the progress of the hero’s transformation into a personality, or a man. American Gods is a more fully realized portrayal of a character who undergoes the complete paradigmatic collapse of positive disintegration and deliberate self-derived self-revision …

"Are You There, Dog? It's Me, Riley": Poems, Riley Christine O'Connell

Canterbury Scholars

The end product of Riley O'Connell's Canterbury Fellowship, these poems, ranging in topic from family and loss to love and dogs, were composed over the course of Riley's four years at SCU, included but not limited to her time at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University, where she taught creative writing therapy for her Canterbury.

A Sign Of The Times, Zoe Roswell

CURCE Annual Undergraduate Conference

I drafted this short story for an assignment in my Creative Writing 102z course based on techniques we learned in class including estrangement but also it was inspired, in part, by Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams’ play touches on certain familial mental health struggles in each character that were deep rooted and I wanted to communicate the same effect. My story revolves around the present life and childhood of Charles, an underground boxer, who was orphaned at a young age due to both of his parents’ struggles with mental illness. Charles experienced his mother’s mental deterioration before and following …

“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019., Theresa Mendez

Master's Theses

Science fiction (sf) texts conversant with the temporal play between past, present, and future push readers to imagine the extremes of human and environmental existence, interaction, and potential. Simultaneously, despite the sf genre’s tendency to traffic in extremes, these texts provoke readers to consider the ways in which these imagined worlds are grounded in history as well as in the contemporary social moment. As Donna Haraway has argued, “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” (306). This illusory boundary must continue to be traversed in order to consider how sf literatures, particularly those which imagine …

Posthuman And Alien Breeding: The Implications Of Cybersex In Octavia Butler’S Dawn 2019., Elizabeth Rutkowski

Master's Theses

Speculative science fiction affords new ways for authors to represent social problems of the modern day in an apocalyptic manner. Authors such as Octavia Butler use science fiction to analyze social injustices revolving around race, gender, and sexuality. Throughout her novel Dawn, Butler uses the posthuman to represent minority groups in the late twentieth century. The posthuman represents those who have moved from humanity towards a new opportunity that is mixed with the potential for struggle. 1 As demonstrated through Butler’s work posthumanism blurs the lines between binaries such as male / female, straight / gay, and consensual / nonconsensual …

Satori 2019, Winona State University

Satori Literary Magazine

The Satori is a student literary publication that expresses the artistic spirit of the students of Winona State University. Student poetry, prose, and graphic art are published in the Satori every spring since 1970.

The Laureate, Hannah Ryder

Honors Theses

In its eighteenth edition, the only undergraduate literary journal on Western Michigan University’s campus returns with more phenomenal student creations. The Laureate, led this year by senior Hannah Ryder, compiles fiction, non-fiction, plays, poetry, art, and photographs to provide a yearly snapshot of the best work from the university’s brightest individuals. Inside, the pieces explore not only what it means to be an individual, but how different surroundings and influences shape characters and experiences. The journal kicks off with a photograph staring up at a golden-leafed tree, representing both hopefulness and light. It then moves quickly and seamlessly through a …

American Waste, Jason Allen Christian

LSU Master's Theses

American Waste is an interlinking story cycle told in the first person by a character called Rice. The stories follow Rice from his childhood (in rural Oklahoma) into adulthood, first when lives in a “punk house” with other young punk rockers in Oklahoma City, and later as he travels by freight train around the country. While he travels he reports on what he sees and experiences in the subculture that he is part of, whose members are called gutter punks and crusties. Theirs is a lifestyle bent on risk and adventure and also often plagued with drug and alcohol addiction. …

Between The Living And The Dead, Laura Henriksen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Throughout my studies at the Graduate Center, I have attempted to deepen my understanding of how some people, such as myself and my family, came to be white, and what that means, and how it can be undone. This question of whiteness has pushed me further back ontologically, or deeper down, to include how some people came to be human, and then even further, how some matter came to be living. In my thesis project I attempt to participate in dismantling one of the most fundamental binaries in binary thinking — the strict and uncomplicated division between the living and …

When Fall Arrives, David James

Bryant Literary Review

Fall in four days and another year

winds down to a grinding stop.

The apples ripen in the sun

while the serrano peppers implode.

Saudade, Lisa Russo

Bryant Literary Review

Now that you're gone, you've left me longing.

I smile softly because you were here

All I Know About Pool, Charles Harper Webb

Bryant Literary Review

Winning depends on the right numbers and hues.

If White rolls in a hole, like a dog, you scratch.

Living Dolls, Andrena Zawinski

Bryant Literary Review

A living doll, everywhere you look.

It can sew, it can cook,

It can talk, talk, talk. Sylvia Plath

As a little girl, I never wanted any creepy

Judge, John P. Kristofco

Bryant Literary Review

Richard Witched noticed the small envelope in his mailbox right away.

It sat like a white raft on the sea of gray, brown, and beige detritus that

gathered, as it did almost every day, in his slot.

The Commandment, James Armstrong

Bryant Literary Review

Brontë enthusiasts tend to be a bit fanatical. A university hosts their conference each summer, and grown men and women- not just scholars, but librarians and secretaries and retirees- pay for the privilege to live in cramped dorm rooms for a week, eat lousy food and attend lectures on Villette and Agnes Grey and storm imagery in Wuthering Heights.

Fortress*, . Yvonne

Bryant Literary Review

Not a single ceiling or window fan

In our stifling apartment on the top floor.

Volume 51 (2019), C.V. Davis

The Broad River Review

The 2019 edition of The Broad River Review was edited by C. V. Davis. The publication contains fiction, non-fiction, art, poetry, and photography. The cover, "Blue Window," was photographed by Harold Ackerman. The winner of the J. Calvin Koontz Poetry Award, given annually for a portfolio of poetry to a senior English major, is Callista Eckert. The Broad River Review Editor's Prize in Poetry is chosen among all submissions from Gardner-Webb University students. The winner of the poetry award is Joseph Rash for the poem titled, "The Comet." The Rash Awards, named in honor of Ron Rash, a 1976 graduate …

Editors' Note

Bryant Literary Review

No abstract provided.

The Good Son, William Torphy

Bryant Literary Review

I'm on Trailways, staring through dirty windows at mounds of snow piled on the side of the road. I couldn't face everyone's questions, their judgments. Even Shirley at the bank gave me a suspicious look when she handed me my cancelled savings book and the $357.45 from my account this morning.

Monkey Time, Eric Greinke

Bryant Literary Review

Communication devices destroy communication.

Text messages erode the language,

Vaya Con Dios, Russ Allison Loar

Bryant Literary Review

I could kill you with this little finger,

He says,

Jutting the scabrous thing out into the shivering night,

Pointed menacingly toward the enemy

Dog Whistle, Tina Cane

Bryant Literary Review

It begins with a tweet the bird kind in which a friend of mine

deems the hummingbird her spirit animal delicate engine

Saying Goodbye In Brussels, Lawrence F. Farrar

Bryant Literary Review

It was a day like many others that had passed since Brett Smalley's arrival in Dusseldorf. It differed, however, in one significant respect for the sales representative of Chicago-based Windham Metallurgical, Inc.

The Bush Burned With Fire And The Bush Was Not Consumed, Peter Munro

Bryant Literary Review

Skin draws gaunt to his skull, deflating

jowls he has borne across eight decades.