MISTAKES BY THE LAKE: A Collection of Stories and a Novella
Date
2014-01-03
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MFA in Creative Writing, The University of Tampa
Abstract
The work is a collection of stories and a novella set in and around the urban landscape of Cleveland, Ohio. Each story follows characters in different decades who are lost, misplaced, displaced or transforming in the shadow of a city that, itself, is lost. The work depicts characters working to sort out lives of sorrow and suffering, to discover true hope in an impersonal and deteriorating city that, for all that it could offer, does little to provide solace.
The stories in the work move from pastoral, fairly nostalgic and small-town-seeming atmospheres to gritty, urban landscapes, landscapes broken by the harsh realities of a changing city. Stylistically, the writing is meant to be both economic and vivid, and ultimately reflects the working class, domestic realist school of American fiction with tendencies toward the absurd, the tragic, the comic.
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Keywords
Cleveland, Ohio, Suffering, Sorrow, Cities, Working class