Fiction

At any moment, a time comes where young women see their mothers outside of their motherly presence. Viewing them as a person beyond what they have done and accomplished beyond their offspring. What could be worse is the young woman sees and considers the realities and decisions her mother - this woman - has made and disagrees with them. It is a difficult place to be, in a position as a young woman and seeing the future laid before you embodied in the mother figure. The daughter can choose to push back and turn against the mother’s role and the woman she knows her mother to be; in order to terminate this prophesied future. Yet, there is promise if the daughter is somehow able to toss this image of the future aside, along with her ego to embrace her mother as a woman and not as an embodiment of the fear of an unknowable future.

Between Us and All is a collection of fictional stories addressing themes of gender, religion, family, class, and sexuality. A portion of this manuscript is a linked collection of short stories, following the fictional Kelly/Sullivan family through their daily lives in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania.

This is a collection of fiction that draws on the author’s own experiences as a western foreigner in America, while also taking inspiration from many different art forms and their depictions of American life, as experienced by outsiders. The themes of this collection center around the discord and disparity prevalent between British and American life. The other key theme in this collection is how violence seems to be simmering, always near at hand, in a country like America. In this way, many of the stories allude to a kind of violence taken to be something unique to American society, which often goes unrealized or unacted upon, or sometimes unravels accordingly. The thesis project itself considers how these stories could only take place in America today, and how the aforementioned cultural discord, or disharmony, connects the narratives with a shared feeling of cultural commentary about the country as a whole.

Locust, Emerge follows Hyatt Wrinkler, a twenty-nine year old do-nothing with growing anxieties about his world and his orientation in it. Though resistant to change, the landscape of his world is shifting around him, whether he's ready for that change or not. Over the course of a day, which the narrative follows him through the places he goes and people he comes into contact with, he must choose to either joining the world that has been spinning uninhibited during his self-imposed exile, or join it and endure the pain and frustrations that come with that admission.

This thesis is a second draft of a novel about an orphaned girl and boy, Kate and
Penn, who befriend one another on a Midwestern college campus and discover belonging
and a sense of self, as well as a fantastical quality they both possess called Influence. The
story explores themes of family, friendship, community, fear culture, and adult identity.

Out of the Ever After and Other Stories is a collection of language-driven stories set in different parts of the world and thematically linked, comprising realist narratives and magical realism. The trope that unifies this collection is that of the journey. The characters go on journeys, whether real or metaphorical. Many are lost at the beginning, but they find themselves in the end; others remain lost, but have a better understanding of their condition in the world. Although diverse in nationality, cultural background and gender, the characters in the eight stories share the need to find a lasting identity and a home-place to return to, whether physically or psychologically. The collection alternates magical and realist plots, male and female narrators, points of view, and diverse settings to create variety and a multicultural, hybrid and hyphenated experience. Some stories experiment with language; others have a more traditional mood, akin to fairytales.