MFA 2015
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Item Altitudes: A Collection of Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Stevens, Taylor AndyItem The Bubble Watchers: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Goldstein, SasiItem CHASING PHOEBUS: A Collection of Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Gustafson, JimThe poems in this collection arise from place and season. The place is South Florida; the season is winter. Older folks come to this place to escape the earth’s move from the sun, for here it is easier to pretend the constant warm will keep the truth of life’s closing snows at bay. Some of these poems drift north to youth and disquieting memories, then return to reflect on nature, the nature things and the natural progression of time. Some lines capture the brevity of the best of times, others the prolonged agonizing uncertainty of age. They purposefully deny constant rules, vary in form and formality. There is meter, rhyme, syllabic pattern, and open verse. The variety is fitting to the cobbled crooked path a son takes to become grandfather; and a grandfather stagger along toward life’s end.Item Dog Gone By: a Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Welsh, Carmen K. Jr.This thesis examines the profound effects of Prohibition on race, politics, and sociology. To explore the role of the 1930s and its influences and potency, this thesis analyzes, through the fiction device, anthropomorphic animals employed in a historical setting, as the first half of this novel-in-progress. Through the story, the 1930s not only reeled from the insanity of the previous decade, the 1920s, it carried over and solidified many contemporary facets of modern life: Jazz, the Arts, Organized crime as well as Racial integration and interrelations. Peopled only by canine characters, “DOG GONE BY” tells the story of Basenji-mix STACEY HANKIN, a recent arrival to Gotham during the early summer of 1932. As part of the Great Black Migration, an exodus that occurred between 1916-1970 when Blacks left the South to migrate North, West and Midwest, and to escape rampant Jim Crow laws, Stacey tries to find opportunities not available in rural Tennessee. Even in the North, segregation and other troubles prevail, making it difficult for Stacey to secure a living. By the time of the story, she has already met and been employed by bootlegger/gangster ‘SLASH’ CASTELLANO, a mutt with wolfish features. “Dog gone by” speaks on themes of one’s past often catching up with one’s present, how profound the effects can be from previous generations. Also, how someone can be gifted/cursed by the vestiges of family history and how societal pressures continue to press on the individual’s free will.Item FOUND OBJECTS AND FICTIONAL FINDS: Selections from Novella and Collected Short Stories(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Douglas, CoeThe stories in FOUND OBJECTS AND OTHER FICTIONAL FINDS explore themes of identity, hope, masculinity, family, and the absurdities of the modern human condition. Using at times satire and aspects of the absurd, this thesis looks at how we navigate the sometimes unexpected turns life takes. In Found Objects, aspects of the grotesque are applied to a story where a man’s discovery of a severed foot on the side of the road gives his dying southern town a new sense of hope. In La Cobija, masculine stereotypes and cultural biases and confronted and smashed in central Mexico. Stories like Standing For Something, Aunt Marie, and Squirrel Deaths and Towel Makes Heat use the absurd to extract the marvelous from the mundane. Many of the stories find objects as central to the plot, like in Dolores, where a stuffed fish conjures memories of a dying father’s better days as he sees his son for the last time. And, in Juan Pachanga, a day out with a girlfriend’s father, a stripclub and a latex vagina, leads to the discovery of secret and a decision about the future of their relationship.Item GOD'S PERFECT CHILD: MY LIFE IN CHRISTIAN SCIENCE(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Hodgson, MarciaAbstract As a third-generation Christian Scientist, I was brought up in a family that had no use for medicine and used prayer exclusively as its only form of healthcare. This thesis constitutes the beginning of a book about my upbringing and eventual departure from Christian Science. It includes several healings, and three traumatic experiences that sparked a gradual erosion of my belief in my childhood religion. Divided into five parts, this work includes 56 chapters and 231 pages. It begins with an inciting incident – my drowning under a canoe and my recovery without medical assistance – which took place when I was a sophomore at Principia, a high school for Christian Scientists in St. Louis, Missouri. This “healing” was the first that came through my own prayer and cemented my allegiance to the church as it planted a few latent seeds of doubt in my abilities as a practitioner of Christian Science. Also included is back story of how my grandparents became entangled in Mary Baker Eddy’s burgeoning spiritual-healing practices as well as background information on the history of the Christian Science church and its basic beliefs. Throughout this memoir, I have tried to present an honest assessment of my experience in Christian Science while taking into consideration how this strange cult-like faith might appear to an outsider.Item How the Tree Grows: A Novel in Stories(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Ebner, David JAn unsuccessful novelist, a sexually deviant school teacher, and a man troubled with the loss of his estranged father, William Bradstock struggles with assimilating into what his world wants him to become. Through this novel in stories, William is poised against his successful philanthropist wife, Samantha, whose infidelities cause William to question himself. In exploring the depths of William’s psyche, the reader is exposed to a selection of William’s failed novel, Leaning Tree, which superimposes the stories within each section of the work onto a backdrop of paralleled emotion. William seeks to answer two questions. First, can the vastness of his love for his wife encompass all, including an affair with a Dan Brown fanatic? Second, can he face a duffle bag that contains the objects his late father chose to die alongside? Through a combination of sexual exploits, reimagined futures and odd occurrences, William eventually answers a different question. Can a life be saved even if all hope for such a thing has long been lost?Item Hurtling Through Space(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Macias, MatthewItem Jasmine Rivercity(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Cadora, KarinaItem LEFENSTRAUSSE(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Reeser, CynthiaItem The Lost Son: Essays on displacement of the body, heart and soul(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Skerritt, Andrew J.“The Lost Son: Essays on Displacement, Body, Heart and Soul,” is a collection about experiencing and understanding loss. The title of the collection has a dual meaning and speaks to the phenomenon of the author’s loss of son. “The Lost Son” and “Autobiography of My Children,” are essays on the children we have and those we lose. In a way, as parents we eventually lose our children, to death or adulthood; we can only hope the latter comes first. But the writer never loses; he always wins. But “The Lost Son” title must also be viewed through the prism of the author as a lost son - lost to native land, lost to his adopted island, lost to his adopted home. Even when he has found a home, there is also a sense of displacement, of belonging but not quite, being permanently uneasy. He is the ultimate outsider and this collection is an attempt to make a statement; it is a manifesto of seeking to belong. The political sensibilities of Andre Aciman, Edward Said, Jamaica Kincaid and George Lamming imbue this collection. From the first essay, “Why I write,” to “The Sunday Morning Club” and “Children of the Fire,” themes of separation reoccur. In “Why I Write” one hears the voice of an eight-year old boy on a Caribbean island writing to his mother in far away in London. Writing is his first act of affirmation, long before he knows what affirmation means. Formatted: CenteredItem MURDER IN THE MIX: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Eichhorn, CarolynMurder in the Mix is a mystery novel detailing the adventures of ghostwriter Regina Morrison, who has been assigned to work with celebrity chef Marisol St. James on a memoir of stories leading to some of her most beloved dishes. In the middle of the project, Gina is horrified to learn that Marisol has been brutally murdered in the kitchen of her New York restaurant, The Mix. Gina’s agent presses her to complete the project in spite of the untimely death of the famous chef as it sure to be an instant bestseller, but Gina quickly comes to realize that her own life may be in danger. She reluctantly teams up with Drew Sherman, a private investigator who always seems to be handy when things go terribly wrong, and together they dig through the stories from Marisol’s past in order to find the secret that might drive a killer to silence anyone who might expose the truth. Along the way, Gina has to find her courage, keep her sense of humor, and start living a life worthy of her own memoir.Item New Book(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Stancill, NancyItem OBSTACLES TO LOVE(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Leinfuss, EmilyItem OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Ringler, RobynDriving through small towns in upstate New York, I can’t help but notice the signs of local businesses—some new and colorful, others battered and hardly readable. What strikes me is the name of each store, shop, warehouse. Names like By George Food Specialties and Nadine’s Permanent Makeup. Most are provocative and invite the imagination—mine, at least—to wonder who owns the place, who works there, what their lives are like. Curiosity—I was born with it. The desire to peel back the layers of a person’s existence. But, as a fiction writer, I have evolved. I am no longer as interested in the real people, but would rather imagine them. Occupational Hazards explores the possibilities of who these imagined characters, living in the upstate New York town of Burnt Hills, might be. My stories explore the difficulties of their lives set within occupations they have either chosen or fallen into. All in the background of an economically depressed upstate town made more complex by the Downstaters who sought a new place after 9/11. Occupational Hazards explores the lives of characters engaged in the “occupation” of life. Some stories track the same character over time. Others reflect on a particular event at a particular time. All have a deep connection to Burnt Hills which is a character in its own right.Item Of Leaves & Bark: Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Wheeler, Charles A.Item Out of Darkness(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) LaRocca, KimberlyItem Person of Interest: Selections from a Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Lansky, Steven PaulPerson of Interest is an epic novel-in-progress. The themes include longing, love, fatigue, passion, technology, imagination, music, art, satisfaction, and community. The protagonist is a self-mythologized, middle-aged Cincinnatian, Redspin University professor, Steven Lansky, a self-styled, hippie writer, artist, and musician. He is in love, and destined to marry, two younger women, musician/model, Salen, and artist, Goose, and have a child with each. He slips through time listening to FEAR radio, an agitprop tool in the Cli-Fi genre, while on a lakeshore island in Ontario, Canada. Here his immersion in the wilderness permeates his world. His past work as a radio host, airing his novel, Jack Acid, his posthumous awareness of his father’s CIA responsibilities, and the collision or collusion of his paranoia, with mythopoeic psychedelia generate a world where uncertainty, combined with autobiography, straddle the regions between the real and imagined. He learns of the Green Sun, and is told about aliens and alien technology, which he questions. After a Caribbean sail with his brothers he returns to Cincinnati, and he accidentally kills Tom, who was also a character from Jack Acid. He is rescued by Salen. Lansky takes a blue water adventure crossing the Atlantic, with now pregnant Salen, before an African coastal cruise ends with a discovery in Ivory Coast. Steven travels to Western India, sets up camp in an abandoned palace, with music and art studios, where he creates animated films, in collaboration with his wives.Item THE SAFE WAR(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Caine, JimItem SILENT CHAINS(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Entreken, Vicki ShawWhen Patricia died, I inherited her intellectual property: poetry, short stories, brown and brittle photographs, letters, and a notebook. I knew that my mother was adopted, and that her mother gave her away when she was eight. I knew she was raised on a farm in Gainesville, Florida. But I didn’t know the events that took place there, events in which she, in her entire 73 years, could never speak of. When she was twenty years old, she wrote them down, along with accounts of her life before being abandoned, with family that she kept secret, in a brown English II notebook. I inherited that notebook. In this thesis, I embark on a journey of research and discovery, using yesterday’s documents and today’s technology. I become obsessed in finding my mother’s birth family; also mine. I learn that abandonment continues. Can the chains be broken? This thesis is only the first half of my book, which intertwines Patricia’s memoirs with my discoveries, my own memories, and my understanding of my grandmother’s true intentions. Why did she do it? In 2013, I lost the woman who raised me. Now, I feel like I didn’t really know my mother at all, and in this book I search through piece after piece of a puzzle to find her.