A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

THE SAINTS OF BANIAS is a novel set in a fictional slavetown during the Reconstruction Era. The work seeks to blend myth, magic, and history to create a world that is both believable and otherworldly. The novel follows Beah, an ex-slave girl travelling to the town of Banias in hopes of finding her mother; Prophet Moon, an itinerant vision-seer who offers to help Beah with her goal; and the founder of the town, Claude Banias, who struggles to protect Banias from bloodthirsty radicals. As the characters’ lives intertwine, they face more challenges and secrets. THE SAINTS OF BANIAS is loosely based on the biblical story of David and Bathsheba, with Claude acting as David, Beah as Bathsheba, and Prophet Moon as a hybrid of Nathan and Uriah. The novel primarily explores destructive love, the value of hope, and the price of preserving a culture.

LIFE IS GOOD—IF BUT BRIEFLY is a contemporary, satirical novel written in the third person. Walter Dingles, the story’s protagonist, is an introspective twenty-two-year-old with a knack for screwing things up. After finishing college, Walter realizes he’s emotionally ill prepared to face the world on his own. He moves back home vowing to get his shit together. He lands a job at his old high school, but his efforts are exacerbated when his grandfather’s porn collection ends up in the principal’s office, he unknowingly begins taking his mother’s estrogen supplements, and family secrets come to the fore. In the end, Walter comes to accept himself. Set in the heartland, LIFE IS GOOD—IF BUT BRIEFLY plays against the region’s reputation as a bastion of conservatism and wholesome family values, while expressing the mood and anxiety of a generation coming of age in a down economy.

Through a Glass Darkly is about grief, ghosts, monsters, and mothers. To be more specific, it is a haunted story about the silencing of women, particularly female authors. Its roots draw inspiration from a darker version of Mary Shelley, and the lives of female authors before and after her. While researching Evelyn Buchanan, a socialite from the nineteenth century, Ophelia Williams becomes infected by an otherworldly house with a history. As her narrative intertwines with the fragmented findings of Evelyn and Evelyn’s mysteriously stolen novel, Ophelia experiences postpartum psychosis, brought on by her own complicated family history and personal trauma. Together, Ophelia and her ghosts work to unsilence Evelyn Buchannan. To do this, she and they must rise above their own versions of grief, or what time has painted as monstrous hysteria. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

"This paper presents an annotated bibliography of Florida fiction covering the years 1940-1952. The term Florida fiction as applied to this work indicates book length novels which have Florida as a background or setting for the action of the story. Despite careful checking of many sources it is entirely possible that some fiction within the scope of this definition has escaped inclusion because there is no complete bibliography in print. However, every effort has been made to include titles of fiction with settings in Florida published during the period"--Introduction. / "January, 1954." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Louis Shores, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-88) and index.

This manuscript is a novel exploring the complexities of friendship, the violence of unexpected death, and the way in which external environment and consciousness are mutually influential, sometimes almost merging.

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