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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Creative fiction'
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1
King, Willow. "Yantra: A creative writing thesis (Original writing, Poetry, Creative fiction)." Diss., Connect to online resource, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/colorado/fullcit?p1425764.
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Jayroe, Susannah Katherine. "Meat Shack and Other Creative Works." PDXScholar, 2017. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3946.
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The works of creative writing which culminate in this thesis explore themes of everyday trauma, the gendered body as rendered in writing, and writing as propelled by the aural senses above factors such as logic and plot. Dysphoria of identity through gendered, geographical, and institutional means pervades each work in instances that range from the subtle to the all-consuming. Rhythm and intuition bond at the sentence level in each work, rendering a wildness to the pages. Moved by sensation rather than a drive to make something abundantly clear, the revelations of reading arrive at a level of the associative, the dreamy, and the sound of certain syllables and words as juxtaposed with deliberation posing as spontaneity. Grappling with a simultaneous urge to assimilate and to reject societal and geographical cultural norms, there is a fraught tension and a charged friction to the entire thesis herein.
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Cilliers, Charles. "Harrow : a collection of fiction." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7966.
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Includes bibliographical references.<br>The subject matter of the two stories and one short novel in this dissertation, if one could call it that, vary widely. There are, however, overridig themes of fantasy and surrealism throughout, for each of the narratives ask of the reader to disengage from certain axioms of how the world works. The first story, The Other Ellis, deals with a character's struggle to come to terms with the possibiligy that he may be the only person hearing hidden messages in the music of a particular composer. He becomes convinced that the composer has a terrible secret. The major portion of work for this dissertation, Slumber, is a short novel that explores a science fiction theme, but is written in a style closer to suspense/horror. Once the first chaper closes, each successive chapter presents the reader with a different viewpoint character who wakes from frightful nightmares, which seem to have a primary antagonist: a murderer with eerie, unearthly power.
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Merlin, Bailey. "Sentinel." Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2017. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/496.
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Devastated by the mysterious death of her guardians, Elizabeth Davenport finds herself thrust into a new world that proves to be scintillating and dangerous. Can she trust those who claim to be her friends? Or will her trust lead her into trouble? When a mysterious letter presents itself and proves that her guardians might have been more than they ever let on, Elizabeth must gather her courage and pursue the truth, whatever the cost.
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Dreshfield, Anne C. ""All are finally fictions": Fan Fiction as Creative Empowerment Through the Re-Writing of "Reality"." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/237.
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This paper examines online fan fiction communities as spaces for identity formation, collaborative creativity, and fan empowerment. Drawing on case studies of a LiveJournal fan fiction community, fan-written essays, possible world theory, and postmodern theories of the hyperreal and simulacrum, this paper argues that writing fan fiction is a definitive, postmodern act that explores the mutable boundaries of reality and fiction. It concludes that fans are no longer passive consumers of popular media—rather, they are engaged, powerful participants in the creation of celebrity representation that can, ultimately, alter reality.
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Knez, Dora. ""The Release" : a creative writing thesis." Thesis, McGill University, 1991. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=60609.
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The genre of fantasy contains texts which are unlike, or distance from, the real or empirical world--the world of the reader's experience. Nevertheless, fantasy texts can reveal truths which are relevant to the empirical world, and thus fantasy texts can be said to have cognitive value. The notion of possible worlds, the semiotic theory of metaphor, and a discussion of ambiguity are the three critical approaches used to investigate the cognitive value of fantasy texts. The stories in this collection provide a sampler of fantasy figures--such as mermaids, ghosts and living mummies--and make use of the emotional power of ambiguity.
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Pledge-Amaral, Carolyn D. "Desert Palms." FIU Digital Commons, 2016. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2977.
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DESERT PALMS is a contemporary women’s novel set in an Arizona RV park. When Miamians Margie Campos and her husband, Carlos, unexpectantly inherit Desert Palms, a rundown retirement community, Margie reluctantly agrees to stay in Arizona to overhaul the park. With the discovery of a secret letter that threatens to unravel the family, an unscrupulous broker determined to buy the park on the cheap, and a husband bent on hitting it big, Margie digs in and starts to find purpose amidst a desert microcosm.
Told from Margie’s perspective in a closely attached third person, DESERT PALMS is a realistic and humorous narrative that falls somewhere between the style of Liane Moriarty in, “The Husband’s Secret” and Anne Tyler in her novel, “Back When We Were Grownups.” DESERT PALMS offers an offbeat cast of central characters who help Margie gain a deeper understanding of herself and what makes life worth living.
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Budenz, Jacob. "Between the Phases of the Moon." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2018. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2540.
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This is a novel about a young boy on the cusp of puberty who discovers that his parents are part of a cult of witches. He runs away to escape both the implications of this discovery and, because of his prejudices toward magic, the power growing inside of him.
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Davis, Allegra. "Lining Up." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2007. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc3683/.
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A creative, multi-genre collection that includes three personal essays (non-fiction) and two short stories (fiction). The pieces in this collection primarily focus on the themes of loneliness and waiting. It includes pieces dealing with homosexual relationships, friendships and heterosexual relationships. Collection includes the essays "The Line," "Why We Don't Talk about Christmas," and "Boys Who Kiss Back," and includes the short stories "I Am Allowed to Say Faggot" and "Dear Boy."
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Kaplan, Brett. "Existential Bebop." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3553.
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EXISTENTIAL BEBOP is a collection of thirteen short stories that use humor and satire to address some of the absurdities of human existence.
In some stories, characters are forced to come to terms with mortality, such as the six-year-old boy in “A Goldfish Memory,” who learns about death for the first time. In “Cassandra Knows All” a rational twenty-something is lured by a charlatan who convinces her that there is an afterlife. In others, the comedy centers on human frailties, such as “Weekend in Deceit,” where two couples confront infidelity. “The Sacrifice of Mikey Horowitz” explores family values, ancient and modern, through the lens of a bar mitzvah.
Influenced by the work of Woody Allen, Kafka, and Dostoyevsky, the collection uses exaggeration, surreal juxtapositions, and absurd premises to point to the darker side of the human condition and the necessity for a sense of humor to get us through life.
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Anderson, Joseph. "Visitations: A Novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1267.
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VISITATIONS, a novel, explores themes of haunting and desire in New York City, in two time periods. The modern-day action focuses on Alan Philips whose wife, Beth, has recently died. His efforts to resume a normal life are sabotaged by what he comes to believe is her ghost. In the parallel story, in 1924, Oliver Nathan Blackburn, a pulp writer, in the midst of a breakdown writes a story that may play a role in Beth’s death.
VISITATIONS presents Alan and Oliver’s perspectives in third person narration, so that the reader is both close to and may question the subjectivity of their perceptions. The book employs a black-comic tone for the contemporary period and a more formal one for Oliver’s sections.
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Bonhomme, Desmond. "Creative Writing Thesis: Poetry." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/563.
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The title of this compilation of my own creative writings is Trees, Breathe, Paper. This unique collection of poetry, short stories and prose contains a range of work, composed from 2002-2012. The thematic goal of this undertaking is to ballast as many implicit and explicit meanings as are comprehensible, and to extrapolate a distinct spectrum of latent and straightforward explanations with discernible psycho-analytical accuracy. We all know poetry is truly formless and based on springs of natural inspiration. Thus, we derive our purest inspiration from the natural world and we prune it in its unfiltered, raw state. Poetry is an externality that materializes from thin air.
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Jowell, Joanne. "On the other side of shame : a non-fiction account." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8094.
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Lynette Langman's telephone rang on a Sunday night in 2001, heralding the call that would unravel her life. For forty long years, she had waited to hear news about the son she gave up for adoption when she was virtually a child herself. His birth had remained a closely guarded secret, hidden even from those who knew her best. And now his disclosure would unleash years of bottled questions and confessions.
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Francis, James. "Short fiction creative writing: storytelling with a film perspective." Texas A&M University, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/2427.
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The research and material contained in this thesis will examine short story theory
from current perspectives in the field and provide a response to questions posed about
the composition of short fiction. A critical introduction will take into account these
theories and lead into a collection of five short stories written from a filmmaking
perspective. The collection of work provided represents an attempt to break stereotype in
the construction and formatting of what is considered standard short story material.
Focus for the collection concerns sensory perception, elements of film (flashback
sequencing and extended exposition) and gender/race identity. Through the critical
introduction and short story collection, the completed thesis will prove that the study and
practice of creative writing cannot be regulated by a set of technical guidelines.
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MARTINS, MARIA CRISTINA AMORIM PARGA. "MAKING AMERICA: EXILE AND CREATIVE POWER THROUGH FICTION WRITING." PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO, 2017. http://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/Busca_etds.php?strSecao=resultado&nrSeq=30681@1.
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PONTIFÍCIA UNIVERSIDADE CATÓLICA DO RIO DE JANEIRO<br>CONSELHO NACIONAL DE DESENVOLVIMENTO CIENTÍFICO E TECNOLÓGICO<br>A pesquisa de mestrado intitulada Fazendo a América investiga, de forma teórica e ficcional, o potencial criativo que o exílio enquanto instância subjetiva - não apenas geográfica - desperta no indivíduo. A dissertação entretece discussão teórica à escrita de autoficção, com a apresentação de uma novela sobre uma família com quatro gerações de imigrantes e suas histórias. O formato ficcional permite pensar o exílio, sua potência e seus desdobramentos através da própria escrita, e explorar a sensação de identidade fragmentária e de alteridade geradas tanto pelo exílio geográfico como por diferentes exílios interiores e sociais patentes na contemporaneidade - entre eles o do escritor, que trafega entre o mundo real e o do papel. Partindo da visão flusseriana do exilado não como vítima, mas como vanguarda, Fazendo a América joga luz sobre a ideia de libertação vertiginosa (FLUSSER, 2007) que a força desestabilizadora (SAID, 2006) do exílio carrega, e conclui que as fendas subjetivas abertas pelo exílio são também espaços de potência e fertilidade para a criação artística.<br>The master s research entitled Making America investigates, in a theoretical and fictional way, the creative potential that the exile as a subjective instance - not just as a geographic one - awakens in the individual. The dissertation intertwines theoretical discussion with the writing of self-fiction, with the presentation of a novel about a family with four generations of immigrants and their stories. The fictional format allows one to think of exile, its power and its unfolding through writing itself, and to explore the sense of fragmentary identity and alterity generated both by geographical exile and by different inner and social exiles evident in contemporaneity - among them that of the writer, who travels between the real and the paper worlds. Making America emphasizes the idea of vertiginous liberation (FLUSSER, 2007) that the destabilizing force (SAID, 2006) of the exile carries with it, and concludes that the subjective gaps opened by exile are also spaces of power and fertility for artistic creation.
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Rohloff, Gregory W. "How We Live Today and Other Stories." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2019. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2638.
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How We Live Today is a collection of stories about family connections and the process of making amends to keep a family whole. The families are not just traditional families, but also arrangements constructed out of necessity, circumstance, or convenience. The title story tells how a man ends a lengthy divide with a stepmother for the sake of her, his son, and ultimately himself. We see adolescents do the right thing in their circumstances at the risk of losing peer standing or to avert future social damage. An older golfer encourages a younger golfer, easing guilt but realizing that respect for the game ties golfers together. A young professional steps outside of his bounds to help a family of necessity, a group of gay men stricken during the first AIDS outbreak. Another man erases anxiety by dismissing the differences he has perceived in his relationship with his son. And finally, a young man sinks irretrievably into self-destruction over broken family ties.
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Hernandez, Edgar. "J4CK MERED34TH." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/369.
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ESCRIBO ERGO SUM is an analysis of my writing methods, and it seeks to understand the meaning and purpose behind my novel, J4CK MERED34TH. Through this explorative piece, I create parallels between my own life and my work in order to show a much closer history and context for the novel. In it, I ultimately conclude the importance of identity and its acceptance in my writing process.
J4CK MERED34TH follows 19-year-old gamer and hacker Jack Meredith in a near distant future in which virtual reality has been achieved. After a small routine job, someone breaks Jack’s security and steals his identity. This novel seeks to explore the concept of identity and its importance through Jack’s journey as he fights to regain his identity.
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Suarez, Gabriela P. "The Last Cold Winter." FIU Digital Commons, 2017. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3273.
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The Last Cold Winter is a historical novel that takes place in Romania at the end of the 1989 Communist Revolution. George Bird, a naturalized American citizen, returns with his thirty-year-old son, Adrian, to the country they had defected from twenty-eight-years earlier. George Bird is dying of lung cancer, and he wishes to see his parents and his country one last time. The trip quickly turns into a nightmare when he is kidnapped the first day back. Adrian, who doesn’t speak Romanian, must now meet the kidnapper’s demand for a list he knows nothing about in order to save his father. With the help of a hotel clerk, Simona, they travel to Transylvania to uncover his father’s troubled past. In the end, the journey helps Adrian understand the circumstances that had influenced his father’s decision to defect, and his need to atone for them now.
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Powers, Rachel Chenven. "To Disappear." PDXScholar, 2016. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3326.
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Kanter, Jaimie. "Fan Fiction Crossovers| Artifacts of a Reader." Thesis, Hofstra University, 2017. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10286513.
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<p> Over twenty-five years ago, Henry Jenkins (1992) wrote that fan fiction writing is evidence of “exceptional reading” (p. 284) in that the fan text reflects a reader’s commentary. This investigation examined the ways in which crossover fan fiction, fan-written fiction that mixes elements of two or more well-known fictional worlds, might reveal evidence of this “exceptional reading.” Using a qualitative content analysis of 5 crossover texts that remix Rowling’s <i>Harry Potter</i> series and Austen’s <i>Pride and Prejudice,</i> the study focused on fan writers-as-readers of the source texts. Drawing on Rosenblatt’s (1988) transactional theory of reading, which posits that meaning resides in the transactions between reader, text, and writer, and that the meaning produced is a “new event,” this research concluded that the fan fiction writers’ crossover texts were, in part, a written record of some of the fan writers’ transactions with the source texts, a partial record of the “new event.” Furthermore, this analysis provided evidence that these fan readers-turned-writers demonstrated a powerful understanding of their intended and anticipated audience, a commanding and controlled use of emulation, and a calculated mingling of worlds—both to sustain and to disrupt the fan canon—in order to present their own interpretations of, comments on, and admiration for the source texts. The crossovers are evidence of “exceptional reading” in that they demonstrate the fan writers’ reading transactions.</p>
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Eckerd, John. "Collect Your Dead." Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2017. https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/488.
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Since the bizarre disappearance of his wife, mountaineer Abbot Boone's life has spiraled into a pit of alcoholism and alienation. But then a wealthy and desperate widow hires Boone for an impossible task: to recover her husband's dead body from the peaks of Mount Everest. With nothing to lose and debts mounting, Boone enlists a team of exiles and misfits to attempt the climb. But if Boone is to conquer the mountain, he will first have to survive the pressure cooker of Everest Base Camp, brutal subzero temperatures, and ultimately confront the mystery of his own grief
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Collins, Juleen. "Mandala Springs." FIU Digital Commons, 2018. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3654.
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ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS MANDALA SPRINGS by Juleen Collins Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Debra Dean, Major Professor MANDALA SPRINGS is the small town setting for a story that explores the nature of secrets, lies, revelations, and the damage each can cause. The narrative follows Bodhi MacLachlan, a young woman who struggles with Borderline Personality Disorder, back to the psychiatric hospital where she has resided in-patient multiple times. The long-term association with her psychiatrist becomes complicated when she reveals details of her affair with a secretive man. Meanwhile, she becomes obsessed with uncovering the mysteries of the relationship between a new patient, Scott, and his much younger sister, Ollie, to whom he is guardian. As Bodhi proceeds, she unintentionally but irreparably damages her relationships with each of these characters. Ultimately, she must come to terms with the consequences of her actions. To reflect the complicated, upside down world of psychiatric illness, the story is written in the hybrid form of a playscript-novel.
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White, Jennifer A. "Test patterns." [Chico, Calif. : California State University, Chico], 2009. http://csuchico-dspace.calstate.edu/xmlui/handle/10211.4/177.
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Bowers, Kim Silveira. "And then the letting go." Scholarly Commons, 1985. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/486.
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The novel And Then The Letting Go involves protagonists Samantha Evans' simultaneous discoveries of her husband Don's infidelity, her own unplanned pregnancy, and the pregnancy of her unmarried, best friend Regina. These pivotal events act as emotional catalysts, ejecting Sam out of the passive restraints of her unhappy marriage into a frightening, yet exhilarating, life of active participation.
Within a nine month temporal framework, the novel explores a period of psychological gestation which results in the birth of her new Identity. Sam Evans passes from frozen passivity ("The nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--") into a chilling confrontation with the "Hour of Lead." Sam Evans' "Letting Go" is not a giving over of control, but rather, a giving into life.
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Whang, Ho-Kyung. "Missing Persons." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2013. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1769.
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Mikulencak, Carolyn B. "Here There Is No Place That Does Not See You." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2014. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1882.
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Engel, Patricia. "Fresh and hungry." FIU Digital Commons, 2007. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3143.
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FRESH AND HUNGRY is a collection of eight short stories about young women who must reconcile their divided cultural identities and the dynamics of their relationships with men, standards towards infidelity, sexuality, domestic abuse, intellectual and professional ambitions. The collection describes the evolution of feminine identity in the lives of eight women from the ages of fifteen to thirty, showing the circle of experience that forms a woman's sense of self and the way she perceives the world around her. The stories are linked by one year that each character spent living in the same boarding house in Paris. While living abroad, the protagonists experience their own lives with the sensibilities of a tourist, hungry for adventure and transformation without the constraints of home.
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Doyle, Lauren A. "Florida Pure." FIU Digital Commons, 2006. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3236.
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FLORIDA PURE is a satiric novel set in the orange juice industry of contemporary Florida that begins when the deaths of four migrant workers lead to the demise of the orange juice company, Florida Pure. The novel follows three plot lines that result from this demise. The company's fallen president has to cope with the loss of the company as well as the more recent loss of his wife, who has left him for the governor of Florida. A former Florida Pure trucker purchases an orange grove to make juice "honestly." And three brothers from Brazil seek to destroy the orange crop as a way of boosting global orange prices, which have fallen as a result of decreased juice demand. Light in tone, the narrative works to reflect the absurdity of modem life through themes of greed, social corruption, and the notion of destiny.
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Ellenburg, James Mallon. "Chaos Hill." FIU Digital Commons, 1994. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3240.
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Chaos Hill is a collection of short stories that represents the duality and paradox of existence in the lives of characters searching for a better place. The stories display man's connection to the physical world and his attempts to free himself from its cycles. The action of each story occurs within twenty-four hours and is concentrated on small changes and motion as resolution. In Chaos Hill, the world spins gravity into oppression, day and night roll relentlessly on, and only when dreams of escape die is the battle won.
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Danmole, Azizat Omotola. "This Is Who You Are." OpenSIUC, 2010. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/214.
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A daughter is pressured to marry and must figure out how to reconcile her ideas of independence with her mother's expectations; a young girl, thrust into public school for the first time, discovers that the difference between right and wrong is not always defined by adults; a girl struggling with insecurity meets her perfect college roommate--each of the author's stories focuses on the experience of deciding where to fit in the world and how fitting in is defined by family, society and, ultimately, the self.
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Flannery, Brendan Conor. "Collected Stories." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2020. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1703359/.
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Armstrong, Patience. "Excerpts from After the Fire and Use Your Words." VCU Scholars Compass, 2016. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4227.
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After the Fire is a novel exploring a mother and daughter as they are faced with shifts in socioeconomic status and cultures in 1970s Los Angeles. Haunted by the mysterious death of her sister and her father’s abandonment the daughter tries to fit herself into her changing world by giving up her own aspirations to seek replacements for what she lost. The mother is catapulted into financial survival as she uncovers the secrets of her missing husband’s past and comes to terms with the role she played in a life that was a lie. Use Your Words is a collection of linked creative non-fiction essays that examines how things said, and not said, create belief systems and identities, and explores the roles we take on when we speak up and when we stay silent.
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Christensen, Wayne Egon. "Scorpion dance." FIU Digital Commons, 1996. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2353.
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This is a utopian novel,75,000 words in length, set in mid-twenty-first century Missouri. The plot follows the coming of age of an orphan, Del, during an environmental apocalypse. With the world in decay, Del is determined to control what he can in his life. However, the town in which he lives is starving and without medicine. The people are unable to move elsewhere under a law prohibiting migration. And Del is infatuated with his brother's lover, Rachel. Additionally, Del comes to discover that he changes into animal forms during his dreams, a legacy from his Indian father. It is not until Del has taken complete control of his shape shifting abilities that he is able to win Rachel, and provide leadership to the surviving citizens of the town to help carry them into the future.
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Cappy, Kathleen L. "Decency." FIU Digital Commons, 2003. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2039.
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Decency is a collection of short fiction that examines how people struggle with the conflict between their compelling inner lives and cultural norms. The stories are concerned with dishonesty about self, sexuality and love and examine themes of true and false, honesty and disguise. The protagonists struggle to maintain a mask of normalcy, but in the cathartic process of shedding their facades, they subject themselves to painful risks, lose jobs, human connection and beloved illusions. They are male and female and range in age from sixteen to mid-fifties and include a honeymooner in Rome, a nail tech in Miami, a suburban English teacher and a naive adolescent in 1960's rural California. The stories are narrated in both first and third person, and the plots vary from chronological to more complex time structures. The tone is on the border between comedy and the serious, and the collection is filled with optimism.
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Colagrande, John Jr. "Headz, a novel." FIU Digital Commons, 2007. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2401.
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This novel reveals the counterculture as seen through the eyes of a group of coming-of-age, vulnerable, reckless, and often pretentious youths. In New York, Thelonious Horowitz is an up-and-coming musician who is uninspired and decides to trek to Chicago for the biggest musical festival of the summer. A diverse cast of characters, living in New York, Miami, and San Francisco, round out the novel, of which Thelonious is the connective tissue, ultimately bringing everyone together at the festival where paths converge for an event none will soon forget, and a concert a few will get to see.
The novel explores the spirit of youth through classical themes like love, wanderlust, freedom, betrayal, and family, all placed within a contemporary context, and in opposition to technology, fame, consumerism, the New Age, and to many, responsibility. This post-modern tragicomedy captures a moment in time in the spirit of Kerouac’s On the Road and Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
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Cabrera, Remberto. "Love comes in at the eye." FIU Digital Commons, 1998. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1958.
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LOVE COMES IN AT THE EYE relates the story of Marshall Craig, a Midwesterner transplanted to South Florida who turns 35 in the course of the book. Marshall is an assistant curator for a Miami art museum, a man who has been obsessed with--as he calls it--a greed for seeing from a young age. His fascination with the surface of appearance of things is exacerbated by his precocious studies in art and its histories. Marshall views himself as marked by his red hair and freckled skin, as someone whose chances of attracting a partner into a meaningful relationship have been diminished by his looks. He is colored by his image of himself as unattractive and most importantly, convinced that his romantic life would be more successful, more vibrant, if he'd been graced with the face and figure of, say, a Velazquez. When Marshall meets a Cuban-born man from Atlanta, he is transfixed by the conviction that this is the man the universe has selected for him. The thrust of the story goes beyond boy-meets/loses/gets-boy to an exploration of said boy coming to terms with his definition of self. In a pivotal span of six months, the book explores Marshall's obsessions with seeing and how they define his vision of reality, the emphasis placed on beauty in gay culture, the tentative beginnings of a relationship as it takes root and grows, and finally, the inexplicable, magical forces that direct our romantic destinies.
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Broussard, Tracey Ann. "Jump! How high?" FIU Digital Commons, 2004. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1816.
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JUMP! HOW HIGH? is a memoir of a journey to a black belt in Karate, one that explores the duality inherent in being a nurturing yet powerful woman. The book moves between personal growth and an exploration of karate training, questioning both the means by which martial arts training promotes growth and the dichotomy of what it means to be a good girl/bad girl. The karate style in which the author trains embraces the Samurai virtues of honor, justice, loyalty, wisdom, compassion and bravery. This is juxtaposed by the virtues of the Southern woman, compliance, hospitality, and warmth, with which the author was brought up. In the final analysis, the author grapples and comes to terms with the question of loyalty to the self.
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Creeden, Michael. "Broken heroes." FIU Digital Commons, 2006. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2666.
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BROKEN HEROES is a mystery novel set in the modem day Southern California rock music scene. The protagonist is Declan St. James, 35, an alcoholic ex-musician and frustrated music journalist who, with friend and former bandmate, Stevie Richards, investigates the mysterious death of mentor Art Schulman. The search ultimately leads them to PowerTrash, a cult favorite band which, years earlier, suffered a mysterious death of its own. The novel is told in Declan's first-person voice looking back on these events. Like A.S. Byatt's Possession, the book uses the study of artists and their work to connect past and present storylines and ultimately rewrite history. And like Erskine Childers's classic spy novel, The Riddle of the Sands, the novel employs an amateur detective called to action for his special skills.
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Bonasia, Lynn Kiele. "Washashores." FIU Digital Commons, 2005. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1717.
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Washashores was a comic novel exploring the secrets and relationships in a fictional Massachusetts seaside town. Rose Waters, who'd come to Nauset after a failed relationship, encountered two women with a tangled and duplicitous history, and a young autistic savant the women had helped to raise. The boy's uncle, Simon Beadle, once the town drunk, had run away from his past for seventeen years until an event occurred which initiated his journey home. Rose and Simon's paths converged, bringing about complications both whimsical and serious, with events reaching a crisis at the town's Tri-centennial celebration. Here, all that had been hidden was revealed through Rose and Simon's collaborative efforts, and the truth led to reconciliation and the promise of romance. Chapters alternated Rose and Simon's points of view, which permitted the reader to follow their misunderstandings and misreadings of the town and each other.
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DeMarchi, Thomas. "Itch." FIU Digital Commons, 2001. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2769.
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ITCH is a collection of short fiction that explores the ways people give and receive love. The love explored is not limited merely to romance; the deep bond of friendship, the strained relationships between family members, and the quest for mending broken connections are also explored. The stories' protagonists are male, range in age from seven to mid-forties, and hail from different backgrounds: there is a fireman, a biologist/medical student, an adjunct English professor, a computer programmer, a drug addict, an attorney, a prepubescent thief.
Simple and straightforward, the plots predominantly linear, these stories present situations where ordinary people attempt to act extraordinarily in order to connect with others, define themselves through their actions, and be worthy of giving and receiving love. While there are no overtly happy endings, an implied optimism pervades each story.
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Cochran, Joan Lipinsky. "Tootsie's regret and other stories." FIU Digital Commons, 2009. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2393.
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Tootsie's Regret and Other Stories is a collection of fifteen interlinked short stories that explore the relationship between Tootsie Plotnik, an aging Jewish gangster turned- legitimate businessman, and his daughter, Deborah, a middle-aged, recently divorced writer who learns of her father's unsavory past. The stories show how Deborah's divorce colors her perception of her father, while her growing intimacy with the older man forces her to reexamine her assumptions about his past and one's ability to know another human being.
The stories' style was influenced by The Yiddish Policeman's Union, in which Michael Chabon intertwined Yiddish expressions with the hard-boiled style of mystery writing. As with Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, the stories are told over a series of visits between father and daughter. Though particular to the Jewish-American experience, the stories echo universal themes about facing the aging and loss of one's parents while accepting them as vulnerable, imperfect human beings.
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Borrebach, Peter Andew. "Gravel music." FIU Digital Commons, 2010. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1736.
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Gravel Music is a collection of poems, encompassing a wide range of styles from free verse to sonnets, including several unique forms, using rhyme where it was deemed pertinent, but also operating in a deconstructive mode where prosody is concerned. The book is divided into three sections. Poems in the first section strive toward political and critical utterance, addressing Marxism, Darwinism, neo-pragmatism, and humanism in a sequence of interrogations of the barriers between aesthetics, politics, critical theory, and philosophy, hoping to find traces of truth, fact, and authenticity that transcend category. The second section is comprised of a single lyrical narrative which follows a married couple as they interact on their small farm in late Autumn, addressing themes of literacy, love, and domesticity. The third section continues the focus on domestic life, but also addresses themes of nostalgia for childhood and lost love. The poems of this section move away from the formal, socio-political outbursts of the first section, instead operating primarily through persona and voice, bringing the book to a quiet, personal close.
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Bentley-Baker, Dan. "Double Fortune." FIU Digital Commons, 1996. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1609.
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Double Fortune is a novel relating events taking place in Miami, Central America, and The Bahama Bank in October and November, 1983. The main character, Michael Hayden, is a free-lance music producer who has become jaded and impotent. A chance encounter on the Bay with Marisol, a Salvadoran heiress, and Hector, her brother, propels him into a complex plot to expatriate money through U.S. government channels. Willy, a brooding Cuban bodyguard hired to protect and instruct the Salvadorans, emerges as both nemesis and key to the duplicities of the scheme. The final showdown involves the four of them on the water above the Cay Sal Bank, a part of the Bahamas equidistant to their disparate worlds.
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Clifford, Joe. "The Lone Palm." FIU Digital Commons, 2008. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2389.
Full textAbstract:
THE LONE PALM is a noir novel set in a timeless Bay Area city. At nineteen, Colin Spector is a hot-shot crooner at the Lone Palm, a nightclub owned by the Christos' crime family, headed by Cephalus "the Old Man" Christos and his ne'er-do-well son, Gabriel. When Colin falls for Gabriel's girl, a stripper named Zoe, Gabriel orders the singer's vocal cords cut and has him framed for a crime he didn't commit. After seven years in prison, Colin is manipulated into working for his former tormenter. Gabriel is now estranged from his father, who has branched into the world of politics. Working as mob muscle, Colin investigates the Old Man and delves into the whereabouts of his former love. The book draws on the tradition of noir novels like Jim Thompson's After Dark My Sweet and Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, with their seedy city streets and shady characters. The novel is divided into three parts, the first and third told in omniscient third person to depict the layered world of the novel, while the longest, central section is told in Colin's first person voice to elucidate the internal struggles and actions he takes on his road to redemption.
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Bond, John A. "Reconcilable differences, a dark comedy." FIU Digital Commons, 2001. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1731.
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Reconcilable Differences is the story of Miami radio host Adam Painter. Confused about relationships, Adam cancels his wedding and, under the guidance of his bad-boy best friend, delves into the demi-monde inhabited by strippers and hookers. On the air he begins to examine how men and women interact. Adam explores the night world, moving from a connection with its denizens through his talk show to direct experience of its license and loneliness. He fails miserably in his clumsy efforts with women and is fired, sued and arrested. An unlikely, unwilling rebel, Adam confronts change and stumbles almost truculently toward self-discovery. This picaresque novel is told in the third person closely attached to the protagonist. The time scheme covers a thirteen-week radio ratings period. The story encompasses the worlds of radio and the sex industry, using South Florida settings to re-inforce character, plot and theme.
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Childrey, John Albert. "Howardsville Depot and other stories." FIU Digital Commons, 1994. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2332.
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The collection of stories recreates an impression of a lost time and place. In "Howardsville Depot," the stories are set in rural Virginia and span the years from 1929 to 1969. While kernel situations are based in identifiable events, the stories explore the subtle dreams and aspirations of characters in the community which has the railroad depot as it hub.
In "Head-on Collisions," protagonists find themselves in inevitable situations provoked by their own limitations. The only choices are forced and evolutionary with no clear solutions.
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Busby, Robert. "The Dead Fish at Twenty Mile and Other Stories from Bodock, Mississippi." FIU Digital Commons, 2011. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1870.
Full textAbstract:
THE DEAD FISH AT TWENTY MILE AND OTHER STORIES FROM BODOCK, MISSISSIPPI is set in a mythical town of nine-hundred-and-forty-eight Bodockians on the northwest corner of fictitious Claygardner County. Much like the canon of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha works, the stories in this collection contribute to the myth of Bodock-from the fictional town's origins sometime in the 1830s, to the turn of the twenty-first century-while exploring such themes as mortality, regret, folklore, the New South at the end of the twentieth-century, and the relationship between man and nature. With the exception of the title story, the occasion for these stories is the ice storm which devastated much of the Mid-South in 1994. To accomplish this myth creation, the stories often employ folklore, magical realism, pathos and comedy, and storytelling, as influenced by Lewis Nordan's Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair and Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find.
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Toye, Geoffrey. "Mind, motive and authorship : reflections on the nature of creativity and the character-driven narrative with particular reference to the author's works : the novel, 'Diminished Responsibility', & the anthology of short stories, 'The Reluctant Nude'." Thesis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683092.
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Fennick, Ruth McLennan Fortune Ron. "The creative processes of prose-fiction writers what they suggest for teaching composition /." Normal, Ill. Illinois State University, 1991. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ilstu/fullcit?p9203044.
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Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University,<br>Title from title page screen, viewed December 19, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Ronald Fortune (chair), Janice Neuleib, Ray Lewis White, Elizabeth McMahan, Russell Rutter. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 441-479) and abstract. Also available in print.
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Jones, Kasey. "Pathologized Peculiarities: A Collection of Short Stories." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2015. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/273.
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This thesis is comprised of three short stories that explore the pathologization of perceived social abnormalities and the isolation that often follows. "The Firmament" focuses on ostracization due to social difference, while "Shards" and "A Box of Rocks" focus on a specific 'abnormality'—schizoid personality disorder and high-functioning autism, respectively. These stories are not exact representations of a specific disorder, but my interpretation of the materials that I encountered during my research.