MFA 2016
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Item Cherry Red: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Frazier, GuyCherry Red is a story of one man who fled a stable and responsible life, and his first true love, and engaged in reckless and deadly private investigative activities. He realizes his need to escape back to stability and responsibility, and finds the journey filled with peril and tragedy. He has attempted his return, his fleeing home, while engaging in a dangerous encounter with a lethal enemy who cannot know his actual role in her life, and who may kill him at any time. Along the journey, he is accompanied by his father and old friends, not all of whom live, and not all of whom know of his dangerous mission. In the end, it is his journey, alone with an agent of death, that provides the answer to his quest. As he walks through the crucible of intrigue, he fulfills his mission, exposing a lethal foe and arriving at the life he sought to live.Item THE SWITCHEROO: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Winter, Gerald ArthurMy novel concerns family conflict. The father, Jack, has lost his wife and son in childbirth. His surviving daughter, Bonnie, is his dead son’s twin. An alcoholic, Jack’s depression over his losses, results in neglecting Bonnie, raised by her grandparents to age seven where the story begins. Jack had been a star college baseball pitcher whose injury kept him from playing in the majors. He had put all his hopes on having a son to coach, who might succeed where he had lost his chance to pitch in the majors. Since the tragedy of his lost wife, Lydia, and his still-born son, Jack had spent the past seven years coaching high school baseball teams to State Championships allowing little time for Bonnie. When his in-laws invite Jack to Bonnie’s seventh birthday party, Jack challenges Bonnie with a wager that she can’t blow out all the candles on her cake with one breath. When she succeeds, she holds Jack to his wager that he will play catch with her. The dark tone of the story shifts to hope through their shared dream, that he can turn her into the pitcher he had hoped her twin brother might have been. Their dream congeals with Bonnie’s hope to develop into a closing pitcher in the World Series. From age seven to eighteen, we share their dreams and disappointments of Jack coaching Bonnie, who is driven by an internal spiritual force that she has thought since her early childhood has comes from her twin brother. Even at eighteen, she believes Junior’s name embossed on the baseball mitt meant for him provides her with the magic to throw an unhittable pitch she calls, “the switcheroo.” The theme of gender equality is the essence of this narrative as Bonnie attempts to break the invisible, unspoken gender line in the Boys Club called Major League Baseball.Item THE ANGEL'S SHARE: Fourteen Chapters from the Eighteen-Chapter Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Ishmael, SusanItem skin & breath: A Collection of Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Bethke, Ramonaskin & breath is a collection of poems that delve into race, heritage, sexuality, sin, redemption, submission, and strength. The reader will experience the unexpected and the redemptive outcomes of human conflict. In the hectic and hurried lives that are today’s norm, it is often arduous to be in the moment and embrace how that moment can define an individual. skin & breath asks the reader to stop, absorb a snapshot of time, and ask the questions: What are these lives we are born into? Can we change them? Do we really want to?Item Pangaea: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Chacon, TiffanyPangaea follows seventeen-year-old Lenna Thompson, an intelligence operative-in training living in a futuristic world in which the continents have collided. Lenna and her father are commissioned to disarm nuclear missiles in the unstable and lawless territory known as Pangaea. When her father is kidnapped by a band of criminals called The Divers, Lenna and her newfound friends must trek through the hazardous Pangaean rainforest to locate her father and the missiles. While her world is unraveling, Lenna discovers what it means to trust — not only in others, but in herself as well.Item PERFECT LANDING: A Collection of Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Hansen, TinamariePerfect Landing portrays through confessional poetry, the speakers experience of familial, and romantic encounters. This collection, introduces the reader to the concepts of acceptance, growth and forgiveness of relationships. From a Brooklyn childhood, through the experiences of adulthood, Perfect Landing displays the reality of intimate relationships with honesty and self awareness.Item The Maw of the Mountain: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Weiss, MichaelHidden in a Pennsylvania mountain range, the secluded community known as the Schullen is accustomed to a way of life experienced nowhere else. It’s not uncommon for neighbors to claim they’ve witnessed forest creatures at night or a loved one’s spirit traipsing about the yard in the form of an albino rabbit. After all, when one has a stone god peering down from the highest peak and holidays include contact with hallucinogenic flowers, oddities are sure to take place. Yet at its core, the tight-knit town holds its doctrines, neighborly love and some harmless gossip, above all else. For Lowell Jameson, his destiny lies in the forests he holds dear and his bloodline promises him the seat of spiritual leader of the community. His dream is certain to be fulfilled and he eagerly waits for his turn to wear the uniform of the town’s premier holy man. Yet someday comes suddenly when his father abruptly abandons everything he’s stood for, he leaves a wake of confusion and dishonor for the Jameson family to deal with. One revealed secret digs up another and soon, a conspiracy and dark experiment is revealed at the core of the Schullen. Lowell’s journey for truth and to reclaim his home forces him to encounter not only the fantastical side of life, but also true desperation in a hollow world. Before he can find his way back, he’s forced to struggle with the concepts of faith, family, and when to question the seemingly infallible.Item Spoons Are for Looks: A Collection of Essays(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Miller, Ashley PaytonSpoons Are for Looks is a collection of personal essays that explore the powers of food and drink, and the paradoxical capabilities of family to nourish and starve. From reflections on body image and womanhood to rendering the love story of a disfigured man and his selfless wife, each of these essays encapsulate a young woman’s attempt to better understand herself and the uncontrollable world around her. Close observation of people and meditation on both the values and consequences of tradition are the narrator’s guiding forces. What is at stake when you fall in love? What is at stake when you stop loving? And why can’t everything be solved with buttery mashed potatoes and a grilled steak?Item DARK, DARK MY LIGHT: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Ishak, SyamsuriatinaDark, Dark My Light is a New Adult Social Science Fiction tale concerning the survivors of global virus pandemic, rebuilding a world that has descended into chaos. In the not-so-distant future, the world’s population has dwindled after a viral pandemic. The Degenerative Lymphatic Disorder (DLD) Virus transformed those who didn't die of a raging fever into rabid beings (“Zourou”), people who exhibit psychotic and animalistic behavior; so chemically altered, they have lost all that makes them human. All semblance of a modern twenty-first century existence has fallen and society has descended into a state of anarchy. The remaining survivors are forced into hiding, gathering in survival camps and picking up the pieces in an attempt to rebuild society. Follow the story of Kennedi and Adam, who, after being separated before the catastrophe, are reunited in Camp Tampa, one of the “civilized” outposts hanging on to dear life. Scientists have long sought to find a cure for the virus that ravaged the world, and when Kennedi and her children are found to be immune to the disease, they hope to develop a cure. As the story unfolds, the couple battle inner demons, and discover how love and humanity can conquer the darkness surrounding them. This thesis contains Chapters 1 to 27 of the 35-chapter novel.Item Life Without You(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Hetzel, JuliaWar ravages through Europe in the early 1940’s as young German couple, Gottlieb and Herzeliede, struggle to learn who they are together and apart. After Gottlieb, an enlisted soldier, is captured by Allied forces he is sent to what he considers Hell on Earth, Tabor, Iowa. A prisoner of war, Gottlieb learns for himself who the real enemy is in the war while working with local farmers. Braving the fickle Iowa elements, Gottlieb’s work on the Iowa farms proves to be his only reprieve from the world around him as he learns of deaths he couldn’t stop, infidelity, and skewed views of reality. Meanwhile, Herzeliede’s life in Wutach with her parents never feels whole while Gottlieb is away. With only letters to communicate, she feels cut off from the world and helpless. When her parents send her to live with her Aunt Ana, a nurse in Munich, she learns how good her life really was in the German countryside. In the city with Ana by her side, Herzeliede struggles to deal with her long distance relationship, angry superiors, and continual overnight bombings which become part of her everyday life. She also discovers who she really wants to be with Gottlieb and without. Circumstances may keep them apart physically, but it is their attitudes that keep them apart emotionally in Life Without You.Item MANIFEST: Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Redmond-Theodore, AngelaThis collection shows how art is an act of responsibility. That is, because the poet is able to respond—to injustice, to art, to the natural world, to personal experiences and family history—she must respond. However poetry touches the reader, its greater value is in moving her, or him, to respond in turn. Although a majority of these poems are lyrical, the tension of shifting from one theme to the next creates a narrative arc. Recurring themes, motifs, and the naming of names provide a “story.” Most of these poems operate with brevity, and concision of line and stanza, carrying the reader's eye down the page. Free verse alternates, on occasion, with received forms. The diction is simple, tinted with African-American dialect, determined by an interest in strong auditory impact. We limit the scope of creativity and understanding when we ask, reductively, "What is the poem about?" This collection redirects both reader and writer to the more accurate question, “What is the poem saying?”Item Uncharted(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Knowles, Tiffany R.Item Safest Place in Iraq(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Linzey, Paul E.While deployed to a small coalition-led Forward Operating Base as a chaplain in the spring and summer of 2007, Chaplain Paul Linzey experienced the danger of war, the loneliness of being away from home, and the exhilaration of watching up close as God answered prayer, changed lives, and performed miracles. After asking to go to Iraq, he was assigned to Camp Echo, just outside the city of Ad Diwaniyah. There hadn’t been a chaplain there during three years of war. The author and his Chaplain Assistant had to start from scratch and lay a foundation for ministry. Heat, danger, dust, and death formed the context for the ministry the 52-year-old was sent to do. His job was to establish a religious program. There was no chapel, no office, no phone, and no internet connection designated for a Religious Support Team. There were no Bibles, literature, or supplies. Operating from his philosophy that “ministry follows friendship,” Linzey built relationships among the men and women, military and civilian, American and Coalition. This allowed him to be there when people were at their best and at their worst, in their strongest and weakest moments. This is the story of what happened in his life and theirs. Drawing on personal experience, he creates a narrative of war that is different than you’ve ever heard or read.Item Quiet De Luxe Portable: Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Steinwand, KurtThe Swan Painter grapples with how loss, failure, and even minor triumph can lack meaning. These poems document Midwestern roots, growing up in Florida, transplanting to California, and being called back by necessity to gather and preserve what lives in impermanence, as a family dies out. Flowers yield short-blooming moments. A timeline carries us from ancient Greece to the suicide of Robin Williams. Along the continuum of the sixties, filled with music and ruined innocence, Bob Dylan gets redefined as a confidante, his iconic songs in earnest conversation. The San Francisco Bay Area transforms into an unobtainable ideal, alive in clarity and relevance. These poems comment on desires in their most basic form, and the realities that both fade and fuel them.Item Off in the Weeds(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Garms, EdenMy thesis is an exploration of the neurotic human. I looked at its effects on social situations, the personal psyche, and the effects on the seemingly innocent bystander. I tried to approach the idea of neuroticism from as many angles as possible, to think outside the pre-labeled box of neuroticism, my goal being to show its vast reach on our everyday interactions. Varying from mild to extreme situations, neurotic behavior has massive social implications.Item The Blessed Meek(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Howard, JessicaTHE BLESSED MEEK is an exploration of free will versus the sovereignty of the church and those who keep its doctrines. By exposing the lives of Meekness residents, especially preachers’ kids, Will Chance and Alora Ryan, the reader discovers the heart of this short story collection, which traverses the bridge between religious faith and humanistic needs. Even though these protagonists are raised in different generations, they encounter the same problems regarding Meekness: do they fight against the value system of the Meek; or do they humble themselves under its weight? By engaging multiple points of views, readers are drawn into the hearts and minds of Meekness citizens, so one knows exactly how it feels to be Meek.Item Peace Be the Journey(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Schumacher, TimothyItem D.C.B.(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Bolger, Benjamin B.The work explores events related to the death of Donald C. Bolger. The author and son, Benjamin B. Bolger, reflects on the complex impact of his father’s death.Item When I Fall Off Love(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Kippola, GordonWhen I Fall Off Love is a collection of poetry that examines our fluid uncertainties of personal identity, memory and relationships, through stories a speaker might tell a friend at a quiet bar (or an equally inebriated stranger, which can be safer). No matter our differences, we all feel core desires to be known, to be understood. Our stories are the more accurate fictions we hunger to tell; even when we don’t, especially when we can’t. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes profane, the manuscript weaves a kaleidoscope of poetic expression: from traditional received forms—to innovative, page-exploring free verse—to poems that flirt with madness. Angry, sad, whimsical, wise, and well-supplied with life’s comedy: When I Fall Off Love blends a reflective, middle-aged perspective with the wry certainty that there’s no fool like an old fool.Item Dead End Drive(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Kirkpatrick, IanDead End Drive examines the human condition through the persuasive tools of desire, greed, and desperation. The main character, Kelly, discovers that some people are willing to trade anything if it means exalting themselves and that some find a particular pleasure in watching others suffer while they gain. The novel uses comedy to demoralize readers and reduce the severity of the murder that takes place in the story. By removing the criminality of the actions, the narrator questions the reader’s morality and draws them into a sense of normalcy and madness. It thrusts readers into a position where martyring others is not only seen as ordinary, but it’s turned into a playful sport. The setting also plays a major role in establishing the major theme of the novel: In order to move forward, something must be lost. Dead End Drive takes place in a Louisiana plantation placed built on a swamp that devours the surrounding life in order to thrive.