Ghosts and Lovers is a collection of short stories told from the points-of-view of four related characters. Travis is a bisexual restaurant owner who fears commitment and longs for the idealistic version of love that he remembers from his past. Ezra, his boyfriend, is an artist struggling to accept the inherent imperfections of life. Travis's ex-girlfriend, Beth, attempts to come to terms with the life that she has chosen for herself. Her husband, Richard, deals with feelings of helplessness as he watches the events of his life unfold before him. By depicting the events of the story from multiple perspectives, the collection attempts to create a more objective view of reality than is ordinarily possible in fiction. An introductory preface examines the role of unreliable narrators and how reality is presented in fiction.

"Distance" and Other Stories is a collection of four short stories and a novella that explore the themes of isolation and personal revelation. The dissertation opens with a preface which describes my background as a writer and the forces that shape my work, including science fiction, technology and the internet, cultural marginalization, and Joseph Campbell's hero's motif.

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“Daffodils” is a collection of three fictional short stories without obvious thematic connection, yet all containing tenacious female characters. “The Winner” is told from the unflinching voice of a young wife in her struggle for control within the newfound environment of a Massachusetts boarding school. “The Seers” is a dystopian story, taking place in a world with months of “Sun” and months of dark at a time, intimately describing the effects of this phenomenon upon the civilization. Lastly, “Plastic Flowers” examines the loss of love and comfort within a relationship, depicting the insecurities of young adult life in New York City. The three stories vary in perspective, tense, genre, and setting, which allowed me to experiment broadly within fictional short story writing. An in depth introduction describing my process and inspiration for writing is included. Please enjoy!

The term ‘snap’ can be defined as breaking under tension as well as a sudden sharp noise. Both definitions lend themselves to the content of this short story collection and its theme of self-realization (the awakening from an illusionary self-identity or ego). Snap is a progression of stories that revolves around waking up. Novels such as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing, and Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy have all examined the issue of finding identity through a breaking of the protagonist. In each case, the protagonists come to a point where they completely separate themselves from their identity, and thus are able to see themselves from a new perspective. Snap further explores the issue of finding identity. However, unlike many postmodern predecessors it tries to give answers. The collection reveals that while we are individuals engaged in an internal struggle we are also connected to one another.

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nÃo hà / A narrativa, como tipo textual, tem sido praticada por escritores literÃrios hà muito tempo. O gÃnero conto, especificamente, encontrou preferÃncia em muitos deles, inclusive na Modernidade, e a teoria literÃria nÃo o deixou de fora de seus estudos. Entre os procedimentos narrativos estudados pela teoria, encontra-se a epifania, cuja concepÃÃo à a do escritor irlandÃs James Joyce, a qual se distancia da acepÃÃo original â da religiÃo â e se direciona para o Ãmbito literÃrio. O objetivo desta pesquisa à proporcionar uma perspectiva crÃtica sobre a relaÃÃo entre a brevidade tanto do gÃnero conto quanto dessa concepÃÃo de epifania. A partir do levantamento bibliogrÃfico da teoria literÃria, centrado em tÃtulos que apresentam alguma aproximaÃÃo com a temÃtica e com o conceito joyceano, esta pesquisa concentra-se em torno da especulaÃÃo sobre a presenÃa de procedimentos epifÃnicos em contos modernos e contemporÃneos. A concisÃo do conto comportaria adequadamente a fugacidade da epifania? Essa confluÃncia de brevidades revelaria, entÃo, como a epifania pode estar contida em um conto? Para buscar tais respostas, buscou-se uma delimitaÃÃo dos conceitos de conto e de epifania, a partir de teÃricos da Literatura, e, em seguida, uma anÃlise comparativa de trÃs contos escritos no sÃculo XX que apresentam epifania em seus enredos, a saber: "Amor", de Clarice Lispector; "Olhar", de Rubem Fonseca; e "Axolotle", de Julio CortÃzar. / The narrative, as a type of text, has been practiced by literary writers for a long time. The short story genre, specifically, was preferred by many of them, even in Modernity, and literary theory has not left it out. Among the narrative procedures considered by the theory, there is the epiphany, as was conceptualized by Irish wirter James Joyce, dissociating itself from the original religious sense, and aiming at the scope of literary studies. The goal of this research is to provide a critical perception on the relation between the brevity of the short story genre and of this epiphany concept. From the bibliographic survey of literary theory, centered on titles which present certain approximation to the theme and to the joycean concept, this reasearch focus on the speculation on the presence of epiphanic procedures in modern and contemporary short stories. The hypothesis raised is that a correlation exists between the short story and epiphany, for the concision of the genre would properly contain the fugacity of the procedure. Therefore, the confluence of these brevities would reveal how the epiphany can be enclosed in a short story. To that end, this paper sought a delimitation of the concepts of short story and epiphany from Literature thinkers followed by a comparative analysis of three short stories namely: "Amor", by Clarice Lispector; "Olhar", by Rubem Fonseca; and "Axolotle", by Julio CortÃzar.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar a configuração de uma visão trágica do mundo na obra do escritor Rubem Fonseca. Para isso, em cada um de seus quatro capítulos é analisado um conto considerado exemplar no que diz respeito a essa configuração. São eles Madona (de A coleira do cão, 1965), O pedido (de Feliz ano novo, 1975), Mandrake (de O cobrador, 1979) e Meu avô (de Pequenas criaturas, 2002). O título da dissertação foi escolhido com base nos três principais fatores dessa configuração que são encontrados nos contos e que, combinados, dão a esses textos sua dimensão trágica. / This study aims to investigate the configuration of a \"tragic perception of the world\" in the work of the writer Rubem Fonseca. To do so, in each of its four chapters a short story considered exemplar regarding this configuration is examined. They are Madona (from A coleira do cão, 1965), O pedido (from Feliz ano novo, 1975), Mandrake (from O cobrador, 1979) e Meu avô (from Pequenas criaturas, 2002). The title of this dissertation was chosen based on the three main aspects of this setting that are found in the short stories and that, combined, give these texts its tragic dimension.

What follows are the motivations and desires behind my writing and why I chose to pursue writing in the first place. This paper not only gives context to my creative stories, but it also functions as a self-portrait, a glimpse of the writer behind the text. In this paper, I speak of my experiences of growing up in a marginalized group, of being a daughter of Mexican immigrants and a member of the working class. I explain how those experiences helped shape the content and voice that I portray in my collection of short stories called, Somewhere Between Here and There. This collection of short stories emerged at the start of my graduate program but it was a project that was slowly accumulating over the years. The collection centers on the invisibility of a Latino community and dramatizes the challenges that they face as individuals and as a group. Many of my characters face challenges both at an individual and institutional level that causes fragmentation. In the end, each character tries to cope with their situation while trying to find and discover a sense of self and belonging in the world.

This Terrible Silence is a collection of nineteen stand-alone stories. The work largely focuses on characters on the fringe of society—alcoholics, gamblers, thieves, liars, cheaters, and loners, who feel trapped or destined to repeat their troubles. In the struggle to break free, either by self-fulfillment or outside interference, these stories showcase the characters’ hearts and wills in the face of often daunting or insurmountable desperation. The stories in this collection are influenced by the work of Raymond Carver, and the Dirty Realism of Larry Brown, Breece DJ Pancake, Jayne Anne Phillips, and others. With minimal exposition, the characters are laid bare with cutting dialogue and active, scenic description. In the title piece, the narrator intends to tell a man vs. nature story of his encounter with a cougar, but quickly dissolves into a battle with his own slipping mental health in the face of a failing relationship. In the first-person point of view, the act of telling the story holds its own exigency for the narrator’s need to understand his or her motives and desires, as is most evident in Carver’s work, such as “Cathedrals.” In theme and style, I’ve sought to put together a collection that might allow readers to find truth and empathy from common, low, sometimes immoral, but largely human characters.