Fiction Commons^™

Reading Is Fundamental, James White

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Rambling Through The Heart Of It All, Danara Wallace Mfa

All Student Scholarship

Rambling through the Heart of it All is a collection of short stories crafted with special focus on the experience of living where Midwestern agriculture and industry seep in to the low hills of Appalachia. Each story is set in rural Ohio and offers a glimpse of characters seeking to understand their individual identities while interacting in small- town communities. Poverty, Christian faith, heritage, isolation, loss, determination, nature, family tradition, and relationships tangle through the life of each character. While male characters are vital in each story ,my own existence in a traditional , male-oriented, rural community has compelled me …

How I Love You, Hannah R. Green

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Little Rituals, Bruce Johnson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following stories represent what I have accomplished in my three-and-a-half years in the Master of Fine Arts-Fiction program at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They are all realist stories, most of them with a minimalist leaning. Together for the first time, they are more than a mere sum of the writing I've done in my time in the MFA program. They are the stories that, when I read them now, still occasionally delight me. Most of the stories that I wrote as an MFA candidate do not pass this test, and thus are not included here. If there is …

Thresholds, Gabriel J. Pline

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects

Three short stories chronicling the transformations of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world.

It's Good To See You're Awake, Maurice C. Ruffin

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a short story collection set primarily New Orleans and focuses on the subject of fathers and sons. It explores the effect that the absence of a father figure or the presence of an unsuitable father may have on boys and men. The stories are literary fiction.

Hollywood Voodoo, Katie Johnson

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Open House, Tarah Gibbs

English Theses & Dissertations

Open House is a collection of short stories which explores the learning relationships between adults and children. Spanning gender and time, these stories depict the verities of the nature of children in conflict with the adult world. Each story recognizes that while emotional maturity may be the cornerstone of coming-of-age, grown-ups have just as much to learn from children.

Lowrider, Phil Quam

English Theses & Dissertations

Lowrider is a collection of interlinking short stories, adding up to a novelistic whole, which follows man in his late-20s, who is left paralyzed after a motorcycle accident. Set primarily in a Virginia Beach nursing home, but also in various locales around that city, the protagonist, nicknamed Youngblood by the members of his wheelchair gang, attempts to rehabilitate himself while confronted with the realities of age and isolation. Several themes are explored, including identity, love, permanence and transience, physical and emotional paralysis, and, ultimately, self-acceptance. The stories also aim to depict aspects of young adult life in America, when societal …

Hush, Valerie Wilkinson

English Theses & Dissertations

Hush explores the rural Pennsylvania landscape in seven short stories that strive to slice the characters open and take a brief, brutal look inside. Teenagers lounge on rocks and rattlesnakes twist in cages. Rivers freeze and houses speak. A hunter loses his family and a basketball star loses his shot. And a young girl learns about sex amidst a minefield of guilt and abuse. Story to story, the characters harbor secrets and shame as they search for forgiveness, for redemption, and for some precious measure of grace.

Notes From The Bulls: The Unedited Journals Of Verl Newman, Joe Wilkins

Faculty Publications

This short story by Joe Wilkins originally appeared in Orion.

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Quarry Light And Other Stories, Claudia Lois Smith

Dissertations

Quarry Light and Other Stories is a collection of short stories and one novella articulating themes of violence, trauma, and sexuality. The stories in Quarry Light and Other Stories are arranged according the theme, movement, and tonality. Although they can stand alone, the stories are meant to be read interdependently. The collection is accompanied by a critical introduction.

On Our Way Out: And Other Stories, Benjamin Champlin Wright Morris

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

On Our Way Out and other stories is a collection of short fiction banded together with themes of the darkened strange, the missing and the moving, and a sense of place. The characters in these stories try to claw their way to newfound identities, whether it's through a financial transaction, saving a life, or putting a body in the ground. An action with a result is what's needed in these characters' lives. Though, often, the results are not intended. Despite the oddity inherent in these stories and characters, there is something familiar about their plight as ordinary people, something in …

Tiny Animals Made To Do Unnatural Things, Ashley Mary Siebels

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The stories in this collection revolve around a central theme which is expressed by my titleTiny Animals Made To Do Unnatural Things. All my characters feel guilt about decisions and experiences that haunt their past. In the present, they have come to a crossroads and are trying to decipher between what they were made to do as in vocation and evolution and what they are being made to do by the authorial pressures that loom over them (e.g. bosses, parents, loan officers, prison guards.)

In this way, my thesis pivots on the word made. Made (or to make) has many …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

Let Them Eat Cake, Courtney Yeager

Honors Theses

My mother has always said she belongs in the kitchen. Sure, she voted in presidential elections and wasn’t surprised when I, as a seventh-grader, mentioned that Elizabeth Cady Stanton wanted all moms to find a real job. But whenever I glanced up at my childhood home, tucked neatly into the hillside towering over town, I envisioned my mother dicing zucchini or fingering the grout between counter tiles as she pored over hardback cookbooks, turning pages as delicately as she would crack an egg.

Ladies And Gentlemen, Robert John Bartholomew

Dissertations

This collection of short stories treats of the following diverse themes: the redemptive possibilities for seemingly despicable characters; the ways in which circumstances and the social environment affect characters' sexualities and personal relationships; the lengths to which characters are willing to go to get what they want, which want is often the desire to make contact with others; the struggle between characters' narcissism and their need to come to terms with a new self image, a self image which is often at odds with the one they wish for themselves; and the beauty of vulnerability. Additionally, one of the chief …

Strange Places, Alex James Morris

Dissertations

Strange Places is a collection of short stories and short shorts written during my time at The University of Southern Mississippi. Set primarily in Akron, Ohio, the stories in this collection explore a range of themes, such as trauma, death, alienation, social class, and the struggle to connect to others. This collection is preceded by a critical introduction.

Girls Of Easy Virtue, Elizabeth Anne Wagner

Dissertations

This is a collection of four stories I have written during my time in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi.

How To Remain Childlike, Billy Ray Middleton

Dissertations

How to Remain Childlike examines themes of place and identity, focusing on how regionalism impacts the individual’s perception of self. The stories herein, set in the post-millennial South, focus on characters with a worldly recognition of prevailing misconceptions that cast Southerners as unsophisticated and anti-intellectual. Though these characters recognize the beauty of the South, they possess ambivalence toward the region, a desire to be less insular and more cosmopolitan. This ambivalence, a love for the South coupled with a longing to escape it, highlights the importance of place in the process of self-definition.

Moon Landing, Jennifer Ann Marquardt

Dissertations

The following short stories began and were finished—at least as finished as they appear here—during my time at the Center for Writers.

Nine Stories, Minus One, Claudia Anne Mazur

English Theses & Dissertations

This work consists of eight short works of fiction that reflect lessons on point of view, characterization, and voice, while demonstrating a voice and style particular to this author. The author's interest in setting and the characterization of personalities that are misfits in their environments is also reflected.

The Dust Grows Hard, Eric Ramseier

English Theses & Dissertations

The Dust Grows Hard is a collection of short stories taking place in Kansas. The stories take place in mostly rural or isolated settings. Thematically, the stories are concerned with the character's inability to effectively communicate and what that does to their ability to function in the larger society. The stories also examine the ripple effect created from the inability to communicate on parenting and intimate relationships. The stories examine how self-mythologizing and neuroses affect not just one, but many,

Serial Fictions: A Collection, Danielle Rado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection of fiction that is not only a compilation of short stories, but a "serial collection". That is, the stories are organized into series, and these series placed in a series as well, making up the book. The purpose of this organization is to figure out to what extent the arrangement of stories significantly contributes to the reader's understand of, and engagement with, the particular elements of each story as they are both replicated and modified within and throughout the series. If plot is, as E.M. Forster describes it, the narrative of events with an emphasis on causality, then …

Et Cetera, Marshall University

Et Cetera

Founded in 1953, Et Cetera is an annual literary magazine that publishes the creative writing and artwork of Marshall University students and affiliates. Et Cetera is free to the Marshall University community.

Et Cetera welcomes submissions in literary and film criticism, poetry, short stories, drama, all types of creative non-fiction, photography, and art.

War Torn, Jamie Bogenschutz

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Fiction Fix 08, April E. Bacon, Anthony Bell, Scott Neuffer, Tom Wagner, Thomas Karst, Cody Pearce, Jacqueline May, Dan Crawley, Jim Fuess, Joshua Learn, Mathias B. Freese, Anthony Aiuppy, Traci Burns, Francis Raven, Brian Alan Ellis, Naná Howton

Fiction Fix

No abstract provided.

Monticello Rising, Charles Edward Campbell

Dissertations

Monticello Rising is a compilation of fiction accompanied by a critical preface. The pieces within were all composed during my studies at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers between the years of 2008-2010. The collection is about aspects of growth, initiation, and loss in human relationships.

Grown Men, Daniel Charles Crocker

Dissertations

Grown Men is a collection of short fiction that articulates the themes of poverty, adulthood, alcoholism and faith. Some of the stories use the same characters in order to further explore place and economic and social status. Set in small towns in Missouri and Mississippi, Grown Men seeks to examine the way men deal with their changing roles when they lose their jobs, relationships and families. The collection is accompanied by a critical introduction. ii