abstract: The Wilting Tree is a collection of poems that explores family as the first and final frontier of human connection and understanding. Through three primary narrative threads (parents, siblings and the individual member), the poems excavate the love, longing, betrayal, violence, enigma, joy, humor, compromise, ambivalence, resilience and inevitability that’s found within family and family dynamics, and innovate a mythology to concretize and tribute what often never renders or is kept secret in families over a lifetime. The speaker of these poems serves as both participant and spectator as he reckons with his own (and often secret) shifting loyalty and resignation toward family and his own human development, which has no choice but to play out within the audience of family over many departures and returns. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2017

abstract: The year is 1982 and the Mayan genocide is at its bloodiest. Ava, the daughter of a Ladino meat-shop owner and his bed-ridden wife, marries a Mayan radish farmer known as “K.” After K disappears alongside thousands of indigenous Maya, Ava hides with their daughter, Olivia, inside their cornstalk house in the town of Peña Blanca. When Olivia is infected with lesions, Ava must venture outside for the first time in months and bear witness to the lingering spirit of the disappeared. Inspired by the unrelenting immigrant spirit and one nation’s own brokenness, The Quiet Yellowing of Birds is a novel interspersed between Ava’s privileged past and her harrowing present, between the highlands of Guatemala, the refugee camps of Campeche, and the cacti-lined cul-de-sacs of Arizona. Written in both the past and present tense, this novel is a reflection of Guatemala’s fractured narrative, of the nonlinear immigrant experience. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2017

abstract: The poems in sign on the dotted line to release the record force the gaze to the grotesque & complexity in the pregnant body, to the failure of the medical system, to the mother in birth. With hard syntax & unflinching language, the work spools synaptic lyrics into a graphic cesarean birth narrative that places the woman, in all her vulnerability & ferocity, back into the work of pain, of birthing, of body & mother. It returns not just honesty, but the value of honesty to the birth story: however complex. sign on the dotted line to release the record records & sets the record on fire. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Creative Writing 2017

abstract: The Cries of La Corrida is a longing for homeland. These poems, written in a blend of English and Castilian, are about an American discovering a hidden self, what it means to be Spanish having only experienced that part of his heritage in glimpses. Comprised of three parts, The Cries of La Corrida mirrors the three stages of la corrida, the Spanish bullfight, each part exploring different aspects of self as culture, place, and language. These poems visit Andalucía in the south, País Vasco in the north, and Spain’s capital, Madrid, in the center, in a journey of self-discovery and in search of belonging, family, and home. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2017

<p> The goal of this thesis is to elucidate the nature of character perspective in regard to worldbuilding for a setting. My research involved delving into writing journal articles, examining the formatting of stories in how they introduced their settings, and general reading. My main focus was on fictional tales, especially those that used the traveler archetype. Also, I examined how the reader&rsquo;s view of the given world changes depending on the character whose eyes they are looking at the environment through. In my critical introduction, I address the issues and structure related to use of the traveler archetype in stories. In my own stories, I exemplify these characteristics by showing worlds from different perspectives. I conclude that the traveler archetype works well toward building a setting for the reader to explore due to the perspective it offers, because both the character&rsquo;s and the reader&rsquo;s eyes are fresh when making contact with the foreign.</p><p>

<p> <i>Bitter Soil: Mapping Generational Female Experiences Through Poetry</i> is a collection of creative writing made up of a methodological essay and forty-three poems. This collection, produced during my time in California State University, Long Beach&rsquo;s M.F.A. in Creative Writing program, explores both familial bonds and personal growth. The essay portion of this thesis uproots my family tree for closer inspection as I explain my subject matter, influences, and process, as well as the benefits and challenges of being a woman writer. The forty-three poems within my manuscript specifically focus on my grandmother, my mother, and myself, zeroing in on our experiences as women across three very different generations. These poems are broken into two parts: the first half is about the lives of my grandmother and my mother, and the second half is mostly about my own life, as well as the lives of several other women that have moved me. Essentially, the purpose of my thesis work is to communicate female stories, relationships, and power, using my own relatives as proof in a creative effort to honor the women that I know and inspire those that I do not.</p><p>

This is a collection of narrative nonfiction that spans forms: immersive journalism, quick character profiles, middling personal essays, and nostalgia in fragments, these works examine Sasquatch hunters, female mixed martial artists, absent fathers, Cuban punk rockers, and the gasps of an industry in decline.

This is the coming-of-age story of a twelve-year-old girl who lives in a Florida fishing village in 1968, and is thought to be retarded. On a birthday trip to see dolphins perform at a road side show she learns that they are captives simply because man believes he has the right of dominance over "dumb" animals. This emotionally conquered child develops a feeling of kinship to these dolphins and when, with outside help, she discovers that she is dyslexic, not retarded, it frees her to recognize that errors in thinking may exist at many levels. Her release from the trap of human ignorance allows her to devise a way to free the dolphins and guide them home to the sea.

Touch of AIDS: A Love Story is a memoir covering the ten years since my husband, Steven's HIV positive diagnosis in 1987. The story begins when we find our circumstances redefined and our future challenged by the plague of this century. Steven's inability to withstand the toxic effects of the earliest approved antiviral drugs leads us to turn to alternative therapies. After his conversion to AIDS we return to Western medicine but continue on a quest that takes us from Taoist studies at home in Florida to sacred Navajo ceremonies in Arizona. As Steven finds that healing comes in great part from the journey itself and that he is stronger physically, emotionally and spiritually than he was before his HIV diagnosis, I realize that we can live with fear as long as we don't become its victims. Love and hope empower our lives as we live with AIDS.

IN THE BLUE OF THE EVENING is a historical novel which depicts the rise and fall of the friendship of two young, French-Canadian women in the mill town of Collins, Maine, during World War II. Micheline Simard and Lorraine Coutiere share a secret which upends their families, in a tight knit community where tradition, religious values, and reputation matter most. Micheline learns to think and act for herself, learning the power of a lie, while Lorraine must struggle to discern lies, and how to break out of the shadow of convention and lead her own life. The novel presents multiple points of view in the third person, which lets the reader follow the plot as it moves forward in multiple locations. Like Ian McEwan's Atonement and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, IN THE BLUE OF THE EVENING uses mistaken identities, secrets, and discoveries for dramatic effect.