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The collection of works contained herein cast a critical eye on popular modes of storytelling as forces at work within our culture that shape our emotional realities. Each of these stories is driven by one or more of the following emotional engines: the ideas of regret and responsibility for the self; an individual reckoning with the narratives society provides for us to exist within; the space between the construction of our "selves" for others, and how we exist in our own skins; and the particular pitfalls of human interaction with these concepts through digital interfaces (social media and television). At stake in this collection of stories is the characters reckoning with their own grasp of personal responsibility -- where its boundaries exist and what it can look like in different situations. Throughout the collection, similar names and events refract and echo one another, giving the prose a textured and haunted effect that underscores the stories' narrative content. As a cohesive unit, this collection strives to destabilize the reader's expectations of what it is possible to receive from a work of fiction, moving beyond the Freytag "what-happened" construction into a meta-consideration of the structure of stories we tell ourselves in our own lives -- including an awareness of how this structure supports or, frequently, limits us.

The first half of a novel entitled Death by Water. The novel depicts a catastrophic event—the sinking of a cruise ship on which a high school prom is taking place—and the fallout of the event across the internet and in the life of a character who had a close relationship with those that died on the ship.

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Quiet People is a collection of short stories that take place in the fictional town of Kettleborough, New Hampshire.

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate understanding of the themes, techniques and traditions of creative writing, combining all of the knowledge gleaned from coursework in a body of original fiction. The thesis consists of a collection of short stories and a critical introduction which positions them within the mode of modernism. Themes, structure and the process of creative development are examined and explicated. Influences on style, theme, subject and tone are also described so as to create a line of continuity linking this work to its literary predecessors. The stories follow the path first blazed by Chekhov, then expanded by later modernist writers such as James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Stylistically, I have been most influenced by the lyricism of writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Flannery O’Connor. I have chosen as the subjects of my stories ordinary people who lead ordinary lives generally devoid of fabulous and exciting incidents that might comprise an exciting plot. The characters themselves do not represent anything in particular, except perhaps a general human condition that, due to their very ordinariness, is inescapable. By encompassing within the narratives both dreams and extended imaginings, these stories will challenge the boundaries of literal reality in some small degree. Although each story will advance its own “discrete moment,” all the stories will share a focus on internal struggles rather than on external actions and an overall theme of lying, concentrating on the lies that we, as humans, tell ourselves in order to deal with events that occur in our lives and the consequences of our actions. Following in the footsteps of James Joyce and Flannery O’Connor, each of the stories will be epiphanic rather than anecdotal in nature. However, some of the stories will center on false or failed epiphanies, wherein the main character fails to come to a realization or comes to an incorrect realization.

Inaug.-diss.--Leipzig. / Lebenslauf. "Erscheint zugleich als selbständige schrift im verlag Carl Garte, Leipzig." "Literaturverzeichnis": p. 173-178.