Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Creative Writing/Fiction

In this short story collection, Welcome Home, I explore what it means to be lonely, an outsider, and someone searching for their place in the world. My characters are complex men and women who struggle with grief, heartbreak, and a disconnection from their own mind and body. These characters consider themselves the NPCs in the lives of main characters, who shape, affect, or harm them. We see them grow over the course of these stories and learn to find their voices. They are not in the in-group, but outsiders in more ways than one. In many of these stories, I allow my characters to be angry. They feel like real people because they are real people. Despite run-ins with an alien, a virtual reality device that allows you to explore your literal memories, or a cult to Neil Armstrong, theses stories are grounded in the fact that they are centered around human beings with real struggles.

Committee: Jackson Bliss (Committee Chair); Lawrence Coates (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Creative Writing/Fiction

Undesirable is a collection of flash fiction and short stories that focuses on the body and the anxiety that comes with having one, largely through the lens of the uncanny and the otherworldly. This collection explores how humans, as individuals and as a society, are uncomfortable with “non-traditional” bodies and are especially uncomfortable with expressing any discomfort about their own bodies or others' bodies, to themselves and each other. Sometimes this exploration is humorous, highlighting the irony of celebrating certain bodies and shunning others for equally shallow reasons; and sometimes it is dark, focusing on characters who are ultimately trapped in a cycle of self-hatred. Whether it's plants growing one's body, participating in a deadly circus act for a new look, or a fixation on thumbs, these characters are forced to face themselves as well as well as the societal norms that have judged them so harshly for their entire lives.

Committee: Lawrence Coates PhD (Advisor); Jackson Bliss PhD (Committee Member); Rebecca Schiff Master's (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, Creative Writing/Fiction

The stories in these four chapbooks examine borders, limitations, and the mechanisms of exclusion by which society operates, as well as the mechanisms of inclusion through which it might become kinder and better. The tales trot the globe and zip through time from a darkly dreamed-up, dystopic version of western Ohio to the Bucharest of the 1930s to the Podunk Fairgrounds of contemporary Central California. These stories examine tensions between agency and authority, freedom and self-destruction, and engagement and withdrawal, as the characters in them reckon with the possibility and peril of acceptance—of themselves, others, and the sadder inevitabilities of life—and interrogate notions of what it means to love and accept someone in a world where people are constantly denying others the same treatment. Many stories began as ethical questions the author couldn't answer; rather than prescribe solutions, the stories observe at length the attempts of characters to find light in what is morally murky, and to justify to themselves and their community why they've let their light guide them thus. The collection of twenty-four stories was split into fourths in a concession to the attractive nature of the chapbook form and arranged according to natural cycles to approximate four seasons of weather, four times of the day, and four approximate stages of human life. “In an Ohio Dreamscape” has a wintry, midnight feel, and operates by the twilit illogic of dreams, childhood whimsy, and magic. “The Journalist is Here” springs the reader into a busy morning of work, travel, and praxis in the outer world; its pieces stem from autobiography, history, and facts gathered in pen-scrawled journals. “Lovelorn: Five Blues,” the noontime, summer section, examines mid-life heartache and the costs of living with and without love. “Grasses like Flayed Lion Hides,” the autumnal, California-set section, follows the sun to the Golden State and dips us West towards evening, night and death; its ch (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Wendell Mayo (Advisor); Lawrence Coates (Committee Member); Theresa Williams (Committee Member) Subjects: Animals; Comparative Literature; Cultural Anthropology; Experiments; Fine Arts; Folklore; Limnology; Literature; Modern Literature; Personality; Social Structure; Spirituality

Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Creative Writing/Fiction

The eighteen stories in The Preservation of Objects Lost at Sea are loose interpretations of three classic fairy tales: "Goldilocks and The Three Bears," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Hansel and Gretel." My fictions explore themes inherent in those old tales. In the first section, "Goldie and the Bears," many stories revolve around the loss or hoarding of material objects and the unwelcome insertion of one's self into the life of the other. "La Belle et la Bete" contains stories that focus on the relationship between an ordinary character and a grotesque character (a character monstrous or fantastic in the artistic tradition of grotesques). In "The Children and the Ogre," many stories deal with children who are literally or figuratively lost, who encounter danger or violence in trying to find their way home.The thesis moves back and forth, like waves, between short and long stories. This movement is meant to highlight the movement in the fictions between realism, magical realism, and fabulism. The flash-fiction pieces included serve as epigraphs for the longer pieces, highlighting a theme or image in the story that follows. My stories also move between first, second, and third person, sometimes utilizing multiple perspectives and points of view in a single story, a technique that proposes the multivocality that exists within one society, one community, one family, even one self. Overall, the stories progress from a single narrator experiencing loss to characters who seek to preserve something together, symbolized by the final image of amber pulled from the sea. Historically, stories have sought to preserve what is lost through time, and the title of my thesis and many of my stories point to that pursuit.

Committee: Wendell Mayo PhD (Committee Chair); Lawrence Coates (Committee Member); Theresa Williams (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Fine Arts; Folklore; Literature

PHD, Kent State University, 2014, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies

The purpose of this naturalistic inquiry study was to investigate seventh grade students' possible changes in both writing and attitudes and perceptions regarding revision when paired with transmediation (movement between and among sign systems, such as drawing, music, drama) in the writing process. Specifically, this research focuses on students' thinking concerning why and how they revise when transmediation is part of the writing process. Participants in this study were 27 seventh grade students enrolled in a language arts class in a public middle school. Multiple data were collected: writing journals, questionnaires, transmediated objects, technology artifacts, interviews, videos, and reflections. The constant comparative method was used to analyze and triangulate the data. Results revealed that students selected sign systems based on comfort and availability. In addition, students focused on macro-structural changes rather than centered on superficial changes that are more specific to the traditional editing process. Students attributed these revisions to transmediation, which enabled them to view their writing in a new way. Student attitudes and perceptions demonstrated that while they initially believed revision to be more editing-specific, at the end of the study students shared that revision should be more holistic, centering on transforming content and ideas in an effort to produce stronger writing.

Committee: William Bintz Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Denise Morgan Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Susan Iverson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Language Arts; Literacy; Teaching