Fiction Commons^™

Laundromat, Sheila Golburgh Johnson

Bryant Literary Review

Out of the washer

endlessly swirling,

damp and wrinkled

and knotted from harsh

The Man Who Will Perform My Colonoscopy, Charles Harper Webb

Bryant Literary Review

As I slouch in the shower, drained by fear

and laxatives, does he look forward to a day

With Birds Flying Below Her, Patricia O'Donnell

Bryant Literary Review

Where Muriel wants to be is sitting on a terrace, one on a mountain with a view of the ocean.

The Acid God & The Anti-Dad, Saint James Harris Wood

Bryant Literary Review

With his dirty blond grown-out Beatles haircut, secondhand Hawaiian silk shirts and second-rate flip-flops

Love Match, Ann Robinson

Bryant Literary Review

Beast with cufflinks and condoms,

studmuffin with biceps a woman could climb,

Oh My Brother, Katie Koumarianos

Bryant Literary Review

The rifle stands wedged into the ground

between standard issue combat boots

The Higher Faith, Elton Glaser

Bryant Literary Review

New Orleans, August 2005

When the floodwaters licked at our ankles

And wind prowled around the house,

Bravo, Lisa Starr

Bryant Literary Review

And when, at last,

September rolls around again,

there is a wild flurry among the leaves

Older Brother, Thomas A. West, Jr.

Bryant Literary Review

As a child I wondered

what the lobster saw in the last second

before it flopped twisting into boiling

Whistler's Mother, Lisa Starr

Bryant Literary Review

"Why I are you whistling?" I ask.

Have I been? He replies.

Is it annoying?

Into The Storm, Tatianna Williams

Bryant Literary Review

Olivia sits in the chair near the silent radio and reaches for her brush with a trembling hand.

The Charleston Church Massacre, David Dragone

Bryant Literary Review

The reporter with perfect hair and perfect teeth

asked Mrs. Tragedy how she felt

now that her innocent son had been gunned down in church.

A Litany For Tender Mercies And Tougher Meats, Sean Gill

Bryant Literary Review

"Reebs, chicken, poke chop, slice beef, chop beef, turkey laig, links, baked pohtatah, boot ann, bolo,

Grounded, Marilyn Ringer

Bryant Literary Review

From the pavement

of the small-town

parking lot I watch

I Am Adele Bloch-Bauer, I Am Hester Prynne, Laurie Lico Albanese Mfa

All Student Scholarship

I AM ADELE BLOCH-BAUER, I AM HESTER PRYNNE is a compilation of fiction and nonfiction. This cross-genre thesis includes two excerpts from historical novels with female protagonists, and an essay on women’s historical fiction. For the study and creation of female-centered historical fiction I researched and wrote in a wide range of areas, both intellectual and temporal. First, I read and traced the emergence of female-focused American historical fiction that began with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and continues today with historical fiction based in fact such as Lily King’s Euphoria and Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife and Circling the …

Currency, Elisha M. Emerson Mfa

All Student Scholarship

The privileged Watters family, David, Winnie, and their 14-year-old daughter, Faye, struggle to adjust their suburban Charlotte lifestyle to fit a much-reduced income. Their fast failure leads them down separate paths: David after enlightenment through Transcendental Meditation, Faye after the power she feels in the company of her handsome Earth Science teacher, and Winnie in a romantic foray to Alaska after buried gold. Currency probes that moment when everything changes size, when initial annoyances shrink and reality resumes a new and disturbing sense of proportion.

Heart Of The Machine, Lauren Liebowitz Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Rion lives as a roach in the down-below, sharing what little she has with other kids in need. An encounter with a dead body leaves her with what seems like someone else's memories in her head--Obsidian, one of the synthetic humanoid Protectors who battle against unknown, inhuman invaders. Rion's everyday struggle to survive and keep her friends safe is complicated by this unfamiliar, unwanted presence. As she searches for a cure or at least an explanation, she comes to the attention of different powers at play who want access to Obsidian's memories, at any cost. Soon she is fighting not …

The Color Of Memory: Reimagining The Antebellum South In Works By James Mcbride Through The Use Of Free Indirect Discourse, Janel L. Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of interior narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and internal monologue in two of James McBride’s neo-slave narratives, Song Yet Sung (2008) and The Good Lord Bird (2013). Very limited critical attention has been given to these neo-slave narratives that illustrate McBrides attention to characterization and focalized narration. In these narratives McBride builds upon the revelations he explores in his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water (1996, 2006), where he learns to disassociate race and character. What he discovers about not only his mother, but also himself, inspires his re-imagination of the people who …

Signs Of Friendship, Kaylee J. Kapalko, Ashley N. Brickner

Honors Projects

This children's book is about mainstreaming a deaf student into a public school composed of predominantly hearing children, and the eventual friendship between that student and a hearing student. The majority of deaf students are educated in hearing schools and experience high rates of social isolation as a result of the inability to communicate with their peers. In order to create this book, there was collaboration between a communication disorders major and a creative writing major in order to create a realistic portrayal yet creative learning tool for children at a young age. We chose to aim our book at …

Signs Of Friendship, Ashley N. Brickner, Kaylee J. Kapalko

Honors Projects

This children's book is about mainstreaming a deaf student into a public school composed of predominantly hearing children, and the eventual friendship between that student and a hearing student. The majority of deaf students are educated in hearing schools and experience high rates of social isolation as a result of the inability to communicate with their peers. In order to create this book, there was collaboration between a communication disorders major and a creative writing major in order to create a realistic portrayal yet creative learning tool for children at a young age. We chose to aim our book at …

Home And Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America (2013), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the 2013 Editor's Note by Padraig O'Malley: Shaun O’Connell has lost none of his touch. In “Home and Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America,” O’Connell juxtaposes two novels: Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy (1998) and Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn (2009) and reveals the parallels and contrasts that enrich the discussion of Irish and Irish American identities. Toibin, an Irish writer, would have us see an America, land of the free, as an open, inviting place but exacting in redeeming promises made; McDermott, an American writer, portrays an Ireland that is magical, a little bit of heaven, but finally a closed and bitter …

Ojai, Ohio, Italy, Home, Sabine Hoskinson

Canterbury Scholars

These are the sounds that run across the page and roll through my

mind. The sounds sing out notes of O's and dips of Y and J.

Like a wallpaper pattern, these words pace through my mind:

Ojai, Ohio, Italy, Home.

Alcoholism, Miscomprehension And Salvation : Edwin O'Connor's The Edge Of Sadness, Eamon Maher

Articles

No abstract provided.

"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo

Master's Theses

Kate Chopin’s female protagonists have long since fascinated literary critics, raising serious questions concerning the influence of nineteenth-century female gender roles in her writing. Published in 1899, The Awakening demonstrates the changeability of the various representations of woman. In the nineteenth century, the subject of women may be divided into two categories: the True Woman and the New Woman. The former were expected to “cherish and maintain the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Khoshnood et al.), while the latter sought to move away from hearth and home in order to focus on education, professions, and political …

Daisy And Frederick: An Exploration Of Innocence And Its Consequences In Henry James' Daisy Miller: A Study 2015, Mark Andrew Meyer Ii

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

"Carried Away": Love, Bly, And Secrecy In Henry James' The Turn Of The Screw 2015, Natalie G. El-Eid

Master's Theses

The function of the prologue in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is decidedly ambiguous, as the characters in the prologue, much like the uncle of the main text, are seemingly never seen again. For this reason, the purpose of this prologue is much debated.1 As Rolf Lundén states in his article “‘Not in any literal, vulgar way’: The Encoded Love Story of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw,” “The openness of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw has invited more analytical attempts, and more critical controversy, than most literary texts” (30). Lundén summarizes four schools of …

Listen To Me, Bryan M. Furuness

English

Nominated for Pushcart Prize

"Fire And Water Imagery" In Jane Eyre 2015, Shannon O'Loughlin

Master's Theses

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a study in contrasts. Critics have argued the implausibility of the novel, that an orphaned governess who marries her dashing employer is too far-fetched to be believed. However, a proper understanding of Jane Eyre must be based not on a sequence of events, but on the thematic form of the novel in which the signifiers relate to each other and shift throughout. Ferdinand de Saussure explains in his "Course in General Linguistics," that the mental concept one has of a word is its "signifier" (62). Charlotte Bronte relies not simply upon a sequence of events …

The Attic, Brandon S. Jones

Student Theses and Dissertations

The Attic is a Contemporary fiction novel set in the town of Bitter Springs, Arkansas. Death is the ultimate end to all stories, but death darkens the center of Jonathon Duke's story. Orphaned in 1987 at the age of twelve because of the death of his parents, Jon moves in with his grandparents in the small town of Bitter Springs, Arkansas. Soon he, his best friend and their girlfriends spiral into an abyss of self-destruction with terrifying consequences. Troubled by nightmares spawned by an acid trip and a drug dealer whose payment is taken in flesh, Jon is sent to …

Gardens, A Collection Of Stories, Jacob Wilbers

Canterbury Scholars

The inspiration for this collection comes from my mother's family. My mother grew up with three siblings - two sisters and a brother - in urban Chicago after her parents migrated from Mexico in the 1960s. The interrelated stories here are loosely based on real-life events that occurred to this family as my mother and her siblings grew up.