Apocalypse Girls is a memoir of adolescence set during 1985-1989 in Miami, Florida. The narrator's Peruvian-Argentine background places her at odds between the cultures of her parents, and los Americanos. She also deals with religious authoritarianism at Catholic school, and the controlling figure of her mother. The narrator represses a memory of a physically and emotionally abusive childhood, but the effects of abuse manifest as depression in her adolescence. Despite these conflicts, she struggles for identity by developing close friendships with other young women. Against her parents' restrictive ideas on gender, and the dictates of Catholic school, she finds liberation in peer influence through alcohol and sexual experimentation with boys. But this leaves her fragmented. She gradually locates some cohesiveness of self as she becomes aware of her sexual and emotional attraction to women.

IMPOSSIBLE PARADISE, a collection of five nonfiction stories, profiles the most skilled and Inventive South Florida con artists of the last ten years. These swindlers have both fascinated and repulsed Miamians with their criminal behavior. A murder landed Danny Faries in the Dade County Jail, where he performed one of the largest credit card scams in U.S. history. Tommy Williams scammed limousine rides, luxury hotel stays, even escaped from jail, impersonating judges and celebrities. Richard Hayward was “The Romeo Bandit.” Henry Gherman convinced prominent Miami Beach surgeons that he was a financial genius. He spent their earnings, then fled the country. Daniel Lugo emerged from federal prison with a Medicare fraud idea. The scheme unfolded disastrously, resulting in two killings. In writing these true tales of trust and betrayal, I employed the theories and techniques recommended in The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe.

As a dyslexic child, I always had trouble finding my voice. It's hard to express yourself in words, when you struggle with them. For me words always come later when I write. But most people don't understand how I feel. If your synapses fire off at the right time how can you image what it would be like it they didn't? That's where fiction comes in. If you can override someone's lack of experience with the use of a metaphor, then by distancing the reader from reality with an allegory, you can get to truth that's hard to capture any other way. You can also simply tell the truth in your writing with plain nonfiction. For me, fiction and nonfiction are a way for me to claim my voice and convey truth. Only a reader can decided what that truth looks like.

Running From My Youth: Essays is a collection of nonfiction essays that explore important moments and experiences from the narrator's youth, and how he has addressed and remembered them in the years since. Some of the essays explore the narrator's time as a distance-runner, while others explore the awkwardness and discomfort onset by religion and nudity.

This thesis features a collection of nonfiction essays.

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Studies of Pain in a Multitude of Forms is a collection of creative non-fiction work based around the different types of pain that an individual can experience while attempting to navigate their childhood, their relationship with their partner, and their relationship with their own body. Several longer-form essays are broken up by brief interlude flash pieces titled according to the colors that dominate their scenes. These small bits and pieces from the author's experience help to guide the flow of the larger works, working to lead the reader along the evolution of the writings. Borrowing from different formats for their work, from a piece styled as a research paper to a letter written to someone who will never receive it, the author attempts to help make one of life's most impossible tasks- the understanding of another person's experience and pain- possible.

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A mosaic of past and present, mother and daughter, body and spirit: A Kind of Ghost inhabits memory and imagined spaces, haunting and begging to be remembered.