Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)
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Item An Absurdity of Bodies(The University of Tampa, 2019-01-03) Whaley, KaylaIn this collection of essays, a young girl keeps discarded butterfly wings in a secret box in her desk. Prayer healers and medical researchers compete for a preteen's faith. A college student finds friendship and heartache in a toxic, sexually-charged quartet. And after acquiring a feeding tube, a young woman finds solace in learning the intimate rhythms of her stomach. Blending narrative essay, lyric essay, and micro-memoir, AN ABSURDITY OF BODIES explores the physical, emotional, and sensual realities of inhabiting a body and the processes by which we become acquainted with our own physical selves and those of others.Item ACROSS THE BRIDGE; REMEMBERING AFRICA FROM THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-06-05) Isaac, Cheryl CollinsBy the time she arrived in the United States in 1996, Cheryl had been a victim of the First Liberian Civil War which was started in 1989 as a coup attempt by rebel leader, Charles Taylor, to overthrow corrupt president, Samuel Kanyon Doe. Cheryl’s father was a member of Doe’s cabinet. The coup soon escalated into a war as Liberia unraveled and rebels fought to eliminate remnants of Doe’s government. Founded in 1847 by African American freed slaves, Liberia had undergone years of unrest because of divisions between Americo-Liberians and Native-Liberians. Once Cheryl’s father fled the country and her mother was captured and forced to live with the warlord Prince Johnson, Cheryl soon found herself in the middle of war, separated from her family, and coping with a lifestyle much different from the privileged, Americo-Liberian one she had grown accustomed to. Fifteen years later, she suddenly finds herself reliving those years from a remote town within the Appalachian Mountains. Mirroring memory and the psychology of war trauma, this work of nonfiction uses two distinct narrative modes and voices to capture: Liberia from a child’s perspective in the early 1990s, and rural America from an adult’s contemplation in the year 2012; a Liberian girl in the middle of war, an American woman recovering from war.Item AFTERLIGHT(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2017-06-15) Berry, StevenAfterlight is a modular work which utilizes 17 found artifacts from a collection of many objects discovered by the author. The author functions as a curator, presenting these artifacts to the reader. At the core of the work is a mystery: a town which has disappeared from both records and the physical world. Found items in Afterlight are presented in their original forms, both to preserve their integrity and to filter out narrator bias. The curator and reader investigate the artifacts together, piecing together evidence and making conclusions along the way. Instead of solely reading the book, the audience is expected to act as a co‑investigator. The premise of Afterlight is an experiment in presenting a narrative that deviates from traditional structure and instead is meant to be experienced like an exhibit or case file. Afterlight is a vehicle to explore motifs of secrecy, finding identity, the pliability of truth, the terrors of uncertainties and unknowns, coming of age, the illusion of innocence, and to what extent anything can truly be forgoen. The variety of source material utilized throughout the book provided ample opportunities to work in different modes and tones, resulting in a product that more closely resembles reality than a first‑ or third‑person narrative method. Most importantly, Afterlight was created as a record of a place with no record; it no longer exists outside of these pages. Therefore, preserving the memories and events of that place was a prime motivator in the creation of the book.Item Ahab: A Hockey Story(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2021-01-16) Huestis, BradleyAHAB: A Hockey Story is a sports themed Bildungsroman featuring Corporal Will Foley, an injured U.S. Army paratrooper. After losing his foot, Will must fight to regain his old life—soldiering back, rekindling his passion for ice hockey, and coming to terms with himself, his girlfriend, and his Boston PD father.Item The Alafaya Collection(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2020-06-18) Bentley, LeeAlafaya is a novel told in stories spread across generations as one girl seeks to renew the bond between her land and magic. Conthesa is a young girl whose only wish was to grow up peacefully with her sisters on the edge of the woods. When a voice leads her to the infected World Tree, Conthesa becomes caught up in an ancient struggle between the shadowy lower realms, corrupted Kings, and the magic she has sworn to protect. The structure of events and varying points of view play a vital role in this novel. The stories shift perspectives to show how the choices made by some lead to new paths for others. Conthesa’s journey to understand the truth in the connections we make in life and the power they hold, are showcased through her gains and losses as she progresses through the narrative. Alafaya is a collection drawing on fairytales and legends of old to rethink what we know of the origin of myths.Item All That is Given(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2018-01-04) Levin, MeganIn All That is Given, Megan Levin confronts the shattering of the Davis family, and the pieces that spread and grow on European and American soil. After undertaking the task to heal from maternal divergence, daughter Aubrey and her husband Johannes Esser create their lives in the university town of Marburg, Germany. Back in New England, younger brother Isaac vows to keep his wife Muriel in an eternal state of felicitousness. Aubrey’s best friend and sister-in-law, Bridgett, soon becomes the median between what is left of the Davis family. With the help of a Parisian painter, she shelters her nephew before he too is caught up their perpetual familial feuds. This novel pilots readers though the Davis’ and Essers’ adolescent adventures through the use of flashback, and invites readers to explore the demands and cultural electricity of expatriation as it is seen through the eyes of young adults.Item Altar Call(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2018-06-14) Dupuy, Daniel"Altar Call and Other Stories" shows the division inside and between characters. The collection explores this relationship through prideful siblings, oblivious parents, and troubling neighbors. It contains themes of death, betrayal, moral duty, and mercy. The stories often feature the struggles of growing up as an older sibling through “Golden Hour,” where a sister struggles to process her relation to her ill brother, and “Brothers,” where the older brother must decide if he will defend his younger brother who is getting bullied. It features themes of physical deformity boys born with no arch to their feet in “Sins of the Father,” a father who has lost his eye to cancer in “How to Kill a God,” and a young man who tries to atone for his sins by plucking out his eyes in “Dust.” The stories are grounded primarily in reality with occasional diverges into the fantastical when the characters imagine events playing out, experience events half asleep, and go on bad drug trips. The language is focused primarily on metaphor, and each of the endings move towards an epiphanic moment, without stating each one explicitly. The stories attempt to draw from theological principles, but are grounded often anagogically rather than in parable or direct allegory. The characters are often unsympathetic and operate at odds to their own beliefs, resisting their own systems of thought. While they often move towards self-realization, they seldom experience a change in themselves, but there’s a change outside of them that transforms something or someone else, such as the unnamed man in “Asher” or the neighbor in “August.”Item Altitudes: A Collection of Poems(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2015) Stevens, Taylor AndyItem American-Cuban(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2017-06-15) Medrano, OscarItem THE ANGEL'S SHARE: Fourteen Chapters from the Eighteen-Chapter Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-01-07) Ishmael, SusanItem Another Kind of Love(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2016-06-16) Del Rio, ChristinaAnother Kind of Love is a novel that tells of loss, love and fate as seen through the lives of Ray and Cheyenne—whose love for each other takes them both by surprise. Cheyenne begins her story engaged to Jedidiah, a loving, wealthy and caring man. Ray, the foreman of a construction company, meets Cheyenne, who is distressed by the growing illness of her nursing home-bound mother. Their initial meeting sparks the inevitable course of their relationship. Beyond love, Ray struggles with questioning her faith and her role in Santeria, the ancient earth religion practiced by many in the Puerto Rican community, including Ray’s mother, whose ultimate goal is passing down the ways of Santeria to her daughter. Through interactions with friends, family, and the heart, Ray and Cheyenne face different life choices that force them to ask the question: How do you answer love?Item THE ARCHBISHOP’S SON: A Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-06-19) Hosek, Don A.The Archbishop’s Son tells the tale of Emil, an orphan raised in a Catholic orphanage in 1900 Prague. He discovers his mother had been one of the nuns at the orphanage and when he finds her, she tells him that his father is the archbishop and asks him to avenge her for the fate she suffered after being expelled from her order. The novel examines questions of theodicy, justice and family relations.Item ARMADILLO’S CROSSING: A MEMOIR(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-06) Lockwood-Fleming, Katherine BatesOne night Kathy Lockwood comes home to find her father has cut his hand and can only assume he has killed her mother. Her OCD and dysfunctional life lead her to expect the worse – and often that’s what happens. Like an armadillo, she sees herself as road kill as she navigates her crazy life in the late 70s/early 80s of Washington D.C. and later Tampa, Florida, told with a sense of humor and comfortable voice. So while she didn’t have most of the usual teenaged problems like broken hearts and prom dates, she had to keep her family alive – at least until she could see them split safely apart.Item Asbestos: A Collection of Stories(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-06) Tier, BenjaminHerein contains a collection of my thesis work, consisting of short stories. Each story was written and revised during my time with the University of Tampa MFA in Creative Writing program. As an artist, I seek to explore the impulses and sensations of which I am most ashamed. As a writer and a student, I aim to craft this shame into prose fiction. “Asbestos” symbolizes a universally acknowledged evil that was once a perfectly viable commodity. There exist many asbestoses. The obvious evils are horrifying, but even more so are the subtle asbestoses that lead to the metastasis of moral destruction.Item Atlas Was a Housekeeper(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2020-01-09) McMahon, DawnItem Aurora(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2021-01-16) Perkins, DixieAurora is the story of a seventeen-year-old orphaned fae hybrid, with the royal bloodlines to stop the bloodshed and unite the unseen races of the Mythian world. Living as an empathically gifted human, she hides her talents while being hunted by those who killed her mother and are determined to prevent her from brokering peace. As the story unfolds, Aurora discovers the value of friendship and faces harsh, unchangeable realities with a measure of grace that inspires imitation. This YA novel in the fantasy genre explores the notion of belonging: to family, to a vocation, to a culture, and simultaneously to one’s self. Using imagery of light and darkness and those amorphous moments of transition in-between to illustrate the process of growing up, this work demonstrates how teens become independently their own person and invites them to ponder the paths open to them on their road to adulthood.Item BACKBEAT THE WAVES: Selections from a Novel(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-01-03) Wilhelm, GreggSet in a time between glam rock and filthy punk, “Backbeat the Waves” washes over the summer that changed Mercury Widdershins’s life. His divorced mother struggles to keep the family bar from sinking. His gay uncle gets promoted to tollmaster of the city’s new bridge that completes the beltway circuit. His strung-out sister bursts about like a seagull popping Alka-Seltzer. His extended family of barflies includes a wooden-legged charlatan, a former stripper with dementia, a reporter with literary aspirations, an AWOL sailor of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, arabbers, beat cops, and ballplayers. Merck’s life completely spazzes when his cousin arrives from Appalachia—as alien as a Wookie—bringing with her a weird look, strange words, a radical attitude, and ultimate questions. Together, they discover their own liberating music, their unique sexual identities, and their separate solutions to what the future holds. Told from the perspective of popular late-night disc jockey Mercy Withers, over the course of her last shift before a station format change, “Backbeat the Waves” explores moments when people exist between things: city and country, adolescence and adulthood, male and female, perseverance and mortality. For a summer that witnessed the death of a universal “king” and the launch of human culture toward interstellar space, the most dramatic events happened at home.Item Bastion of Rome(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2019-06-13) Morrison, ThomasA dying Rome needs heroes, lest invading barbarians sweep aside civilization and plunge the world into a thousand-year Dark Age. Five flawed members of a knightly religious order answer the call and enter Goth-occupied Belgica to save the oppressed. Along the way, they must contend with a dead wizard, an undead cat, an alcoholic talking dog, a cryptic death cult, an army of nihilist berserkers, a clan of thieves, hordes of barbarians, a collaborationist bard, a demonic mystic, a monstrous assassin squad, a fanatic but desperate Legion commander, an ultra-orthodox bishop, their own mortal shortcomings, and their trust in each other. Will Rome’s ruthless spymasters sacrifice them as pawns in a shadow war, or will their faith and unity enable them to master their own fates and save civilization? And who will recover the missing provincial treasury? In this debut novel, T. A. Morrison applies twenty years of real-world military experience to the realms of swords and sorcery and alternate history. This is not the story of the powerful decision-makers safe in their palaces, but the gritty realism of front-line combatants who volunteer to go into harm’s way for the sake of others, not always knowing their superiors’ ultimate goals. In a chaotic, multipolar world on the brink of ultimate collapse, this is a soldier’s tale of love and sacrifice, violence and morality, crudity and poignancy, sin and faith, family and brotherhood, victory and defeat.Item Better Times Than These: A Novel or Selections from a Novel or A Collection of Essays/Poems/Stories or Nonfiction(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2014-01) Cox, DanielBetter Time Than These is a compilation of eight short stories whose central themes revolve around the characters’ constant striving for goodness up against the simple human truths of hunger, weakness, honor, lust, and courage, to name a few. Some manufacture their own misery and slide into darkness, while others, by simple fate, find themselves faced with impossible situations with impossible odds. Through the gearing of the physical to the felt, these characters push the bounds of human nature by subverting the myths upon which our preconceived notions rest, calling all certainty into question. They allow us, as readers, to stack cruelty against compassion, evil against good, and give us a glimpse of the possibility of redemption and grace for even the worst of us.Item Black-Woman: and other stories(MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa, 2017-06-15) Johnson, BriannaBlack-Woman: and other stories, a twelve story collection, provides a glimpse into the lives of various black Americans as they navigate such issues as loneliness, adulthood, and desire. Told from a variety of perspectives and backgrounds, the collection utilizes themes of “us vs. them” and “innocence vs. experience” in an effort to dismantle preconceived notions, and highlight the diversity within “blackness.”