Fiction Commons^™

Another Gen-X Icon Dead, Ace Boggess

Bryant Literary Review

Why are we the waning crowd,

grayest cloud, shattered vase

that once held crocuses & hope?

Mastery, Ken Victor

Bryant Literary Review

And the experience of the failed

work is a prod to practice: think of

Constructing Border Quilts, Martha Brenckle

Bryant Literary Review

looking for justice with thread, pins, needle

and scissors, cutting shirts and dungarees abandoned

Home Visit, Jesse Mardian

Bryant Literary Review

4782 Menson Avenue was a small place with a dead lawn. Past the brittle grass where toys lay scattered, the house stood with peeling pink paint and a roof missing several clay shingles. Jennifer checked the address in her notebook, entered through a creaking gate, and walked to the door.

Is It Alice, Amy Or Anne?, George Longenecker

Bryant Literary Review

Huddled with four other nameless people,

who sleep on cardboard and blankets,

in the entry of a garage alcove,

Reed Magazine, Issue 152, Megan R.F. Alfaro, Shawn Anto, Garrett Ashely, Darius Atefat-Peckham, Lino Azevedo, Rachel Blakley Ball, Rebecca Bangs, Lane Berger, Eric Berlin, Meredith Birdsong, Michael Butcher, Claudia Caranfa, Leslie Carlin, Anne Cheilek, J. David, Claudia Di Marco, M.H. Dodson, David Dumo, Tess Falotico, Robert Morgan Fisher, Kenny Fries, Carmen Garcia Gordillo, Beatrix Gates, Tidnek Haileselassie, Andrew Jackson, Jad Josey, Michele Kilmer, Andrea Kowch, Andrew Lam, Catharine Lucas, Larry Malchow, Peter Nathaniel Malae, Ajuan Mance, Ryan Mcfadden, Mighty Mike Mcgee, Kathleen Mcguire, Bhavna Misra, Nayomi Munaweera, Martha Nance, Michella Nguyen, Beverly J. Orth, Sophia Pomponio, Buku Sakar, Shanthi Sekaran, Jesse Sensibar, Taylor Sezen, Joseph Sigurdson, Janet Spicer, Arthur Sze, Victoria Toney-Robinson, Annie Vitalsey, Mark Lee Webb, Arisa White, Michelle Wright, Sheri Wright

Reed Magazine

No abstract provided.

From The Dirt Up: Layering Story, Place, And Environmentalism Within Three Picture Books, Lucinda Rowe

Children's Book Writing and Illustrating (MFA) Theses

The world is changing before our eyes – species are going extinct, the amount of habitat available to wildlife has decreased, and children are spending less time outside than in the past. Through analyzing environmental ideology within early childhood education and children’s literature, I demonstrate that picture books can inspire nature conservation, appreciation, and stewardship by encouraging outdoor play and exploration. I compare picture books that successfully demonstrate eco-consciousness without being didactic, how my thesis fits within the current environmental movement, and how it helps stretch the definition of what is considered eco-writing.

This thesis consists of three illustrated picture …

All That You Say Is Beautiful: Stories, Omaria Sanchez Pratt

Theses and Dissertations--English

From the city of High Point to New York City, this collection portrays a certain black experience. Through a sociological lens, the stories in All That You Say is Beautiful study intersections of class, race, family, and sexuality by bending forms, expectations, and seeks to understand what it means to be human when your experience is not that of mainstream American culture.

What A Beautiful World, Emily Oldham

Undergraduate Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Sunland : Linked Stories, Benjamin P. Murray

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Greg Duenow And Other Stories, Jane Elizabeth Snyder

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Los Inicios Del Género Detectivesco En España Y Sus Antecedentes Anglo-Americanos: Una Antología Bilingüe, Enrique Torner

MSU Authors Collection

A bilingual anthology of detective writing in Spain and the UK/US, with a preliminary study by Enrique Torner.

This work was originally first available online through the World Association of International Studies at https://waisworld.org/en/wais/publications/books.

"The Names Of Sickness": Emily Dickinson, Diagnostic Reading, And Articulating Disability, Vivian Delchamps

English and Creative Writing | Faculty Scholarship

Emily Dickinson’s “There is a Languor of the Life” hints at her knowledge 1 about diagnostic and surgical approaches to bodymind pain during her time. Although the poem can be read as a metaphorical portrayal of spiritual suffering, it also demonstrates Dickinson’s familiarity with contemporary medical innovations as well as her skillful use of simile to poetically depict complex bodily states. For example, the poem describes a “languor” that envelops consciousness with a “Drowsiness” that “diffuses – / a Dimness like a Fog,” evoking literal sensations one might feel while under the influence of anesthesia.2 The poem goes on to …

‘Bloodwood’ And ‘Liminal Spaces, Timeless Places: Abjection, Liminality And Landscape In Australian Gothic Fiction’, Karleah Olson

Theses : Honours

This creative honours project comprises a work of fiction titled ‘Bloodwood’ and an accompanying exegetical essay, exploring the concept of liminal space within the Australian landscape. It investigates the anxieties and consequences of past trauma that linger within the landscape of modern Australia, exploring themes such as time, connection to nature, trauma and grief. Using Julia Kristeva’s abjection theory, particularly her ideas on liminal space, this work addresses the contentious issue of postcolonial theory within the field of literary studies, as well as the concept of grief as a liminal process. These ideas are explored through the storylines of three …

Coalescing Finish, Daniel James Mcminn

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

This thesis comprises five short stories, the climactic chapter of a novel, two short plays, one short screenplay, and two poems by Daniel James ("Dan") McMinn. The work focused on satisfying endings. Most of the work is speculative fiction---either science fiction or fantasy. The work is prefaced by a statement describing Dan's development as a writer in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program. The short stories address the following topics:

• An aging salesman gets replacement internal organs and becomes an opera singer

• A female presidential candidate must keep a straight face while watching a ridiculous PSA

• A sniggler (eel-catcher) …

Catching Fireflies, Stephanie Mejia Loleng

Stonecoast MFA Theses and Capstones

Included in this thesis are five short stories and the start of a novel. Themes include Filipino American and Filipino cultural identity, definitions of home, and first and second generational family interpersonal relationships. The stories are written in either first or second-person point of view, mainly from a female perspective. The settings for the stories feature natural and urban landscapes including locations in Northern California, New York City, the Philippines, Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Prague. The main characters are Filipino or Filipino Americans who experience feelings of loneliness, internal conflict, parental pressure, and both platonic and romantic love.

Sunfish, Megan L. Rowe

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Reimagined: An Analysis And Retelling Of Hans Christian Andersen's Works, Preston Smith

Honors Projects

Where do modern retellings of classic fairytales stick to their source texts and where do they differ? Inspired by ABC’s fairytale drama Once Upon a Time, my reimagining project was born. I originally became obsessed with Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen character both through this television series and through the character’s titular story, and after that, grew to love many of his tales from the nineteenth century. It has been two hundred years since Andersen was writing, and thus society has changed in ways potentially unimaginable in Andersen’s time. I have taken three of his stories— “The Snow Queen,” “The …

The Long And Short Of It, Ciera Mcelroy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Long and Short of It is a collection of ten stories, spanning centuries and continents, illustrating the universality of loss. Here is a war-haunted Korean vet, brainwashed Nazi brides, a neurotic Soviet ballerina, and a re-imagined Ethan Frome. In these stories, anxiety waits in the wings: will Ethan's wife discover his affair? Will the brides acknowledge the dark truth behind their training? Will a mother recover her kidnapped baby? Characters grapple with grief and anxiety in various ways. Two mothers mourn missing babies: one turns to the occult, the other heads to Mars. Children reel with abandonment: one obsesses …

Halfwayish: An Entwined Story Collection, Deanna Duplechain

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

The Ghost Of Alvar Street, Daniel Spiro

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

No abstract provided.

Triple Double Diamond: Nevada Stories, Kylie Michelle Westerlind

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In a collection of fictional short stories, Triple Double Diamond explores the relationships and grit of people who dwell in the Nevadan landscape. The stories roam between neon cities like Reno and Las Vegas to small high-desert towns like Wells and Gerlach, focusing on the people who live within these places. The people in this collection are restaurant servers, fur trappers, part- time gold miners, gamblers, park rangers, and veterans, and the stories look at the inner lives of these characters.

The Republic Of Catatonia: A Novel, David Byron Queen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

My thesis, a novel titled The Republic of Catatonia, is a story of a broken family, and the one man trying to keep their legacy alive. An adrift academic named Miles Cata moves back to Northeastern Montana from New York City, when he learns about the death of his father. When he arrives, it turns out his father isn’t dead, and Miles soon learns of his father’s plan for building an autonomous micro-nation on the property of their Montana ranch. The novel is set in the '90s against the backdrop of the Bakken oil boom, and much of the …

A Fiction Of Fragmented Falsehoods: Curriculum Of Unwanted Roads Traveled, Katherine Wyatt

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This is an inquiry centered on lived ‘otherness’ in different social experiences. Fiction and illustrations are both creative outlets that provide opportunities of curriculum growth by offering the viewer realistic portrayals dealing with truth and factors that make us fundamentally human. “Fiction elicits an interpretation of the world by being itself a worldlike object for interpretation” (Dillard, 1988, p. 155). This study uses fiction and illustrations as vehicles of communication to provide an awareness regarding social issues in everyday lived experiences, exposing the reader to the social, cultural and historical realities persistently impeding the shared constructs of human experiences. Structuring …

Chance Wanderer And Other Tales Of Hunger, Camille Goodison

Publications and Research

Goodison's collection explores the lives of a range of people who find themselves at a pivotal point in life, often brought there through unpredictable, unseen forces. The characters are seemingly ordinary individuals -- teachers, shoemakers, shop clerks -- who at some point reveal themselves to be loners, dissidents, artists, seekers and sages; essentially, representatives of traditions under test. The many material fetishisms of modern life never satisfy or replace our individual desires, and so these characters attempt to offer new perspectives, new ways to look at the world that’s already around them. While the stories are told realistically, they sometimes …

The Gloaming, Alyssa D. Davison

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Creating The Water Clock, Amy C. Laws

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the making of my short film The Water Clock at the University of New Orleans from its inception to its final short film form. Part One discusses the balancing of content and style and explores the relation between time and water as inspirations for story. Part Two details the preproduction process and major crew members’ collaborations and contributions before filming. Part Three describes daily successes, struggles, and direction while in production. Part Four describes every phase of the post-production process as the film is completed. Lastly, I will analyze my personal growth as a filmmaker.

The American Dream As A Cultural Movement, Thomas W. Raskay

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This piece investigates the relationship between the American Dream and automobility through a generational lens, assessing cultural change in each renewal of the American Dream. Comparing generations of Americans exploring and reforming cultural space reveals evidence of the American Dream as a tendency for generations to expand to new frontiers balanced by a duty to reform current social space. Automobility multiplies Americans’ options for exploration and explodes the rate at which modern generations engage with different spaces. Now that automobility is routine, Millenials have expanded to the new social space frontier in cyberspace, but a limitless frontier may disrupt the …

314 East 25th Street, On January 1st, Matthew Brennan

Westview

It’s moving day—the sun glimmers as dimly as Venus in the morning sky.

Tuesday Night, Amber Thompson

Westview

The coppery softness of cinnamon sticks to my fingers.