Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Creative Writing/Fiction

Warp and Woof is a story collection primarily governed by non-linear, woven story forms. My interest in forms that draw attention to the artifice of story is inherently tied to a love for the oral tradition I grew up with in rural Pennsylvania and, more broadly, northern Appalachia. The way that stories told aloud wind and weave creates a kind of atmospheric cloud that's as much about the telling as it is the words themselves. In my study, woven story forms seem to best emulate that atmosphere. What's more, Warp and Woof's subjects and characters are tied to the same region as its forms, making this as much a collection of place as it is one of structural experimentation. Here are hills, forests, small farms, and animals; dirt tracks, and Sunday School, 4-H, and dogs chained long in kennels. The characters at the center of the stories that make up Warp and Woof are necessarily struggling in search of a personal narrative, a metaphor. The weaving of different times, voices, and points of view provides the reader with a system of symbols for understanding this search on a built-in, experiential level, even if the characters never find what they're looking for.

Committee: Wendell Mayo Dr. (Advisor); Lawrence Coates Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, English (Arts and Sciences)

At the crossroads of Middle America and the Appalachian Mountains, there is a small town called Hallowed, West Virginia, where the veil between worlds thins. Over 123 years, many different people of this town realize that this place that should be their safe haven is a breeding ground of horrors, all while combating the typical worries of rural America.

Committee: Patrick O'Keeffe (Committee Chair); Eric LeMay (Committee Member); Edmond Chang (Committee Member) Subjects: Folklore; Language Arts; Literature

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

Despite the ways in which Appalachia's complexity has been overshadowed by the narrowness of many of prominent stereotypes about the region that have been portrayed in popular fiction, many Appalachian writers, most significantly Appalachian women writers, are producing narratives that push back against limiting conceptions of the region. Two such novels, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake, provide narratives that resist these hierarchal structures by presenting women characters and environments that challenge them. Through ecological feminist analysis of these texts, both of these novels are situated within a larger context of Appalachian-set work by women writers that have advanced feminism, providing opportunities for women to find moments of hope, peace, and agency despite capitalistic environmental violence, restrictive gender norms, and living in a traditionally patriarchal culture. Both of these pieces, in various ways, compare the subjugation of women and environmental violence as well as depict women as overt challengers of frameworks of Western thought and idealism, including the division between the human and nonhuman, rigid gender roles, and patriarchal structures of power.

Committee: Dr. Paul C. Jones (Committee Chair); Dr. Anna Rachel Terman (Committee Member); Dr. Edmond Y. Chang (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Gender; Literature