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The Fourth Boy is a collection of seven short stories and one novella. / Master of Fine Arts

Home Enough, a short story collection, is concerned with loneliness, anxiety, and a persistent desire for both contentment and transcendence. The collection explores these themes largely through a series of young female protagonists, women who are working their way towards peace in isolation, and joy in moments of connection. / Master of Fine Arts

A Veritable Press is a collection of six short stories, focusing on the troubled relationships of its characters, exhibited both internally and externally. While the characters in these stories experience the effects of their own decisions, they are generally more affected by forces outside their control, whether those are the choices of others, or the inexplicability of nature. Most characters seek redemption, though they are denied the means to deliver themselves as they move towards an end that seems inevitable. This feeling of inevitability represents the arbitrary and seemingly unsystematic nature of circumstance. Through the use of distinct voices, multiple narratives, and metafiction, each piece works to exhibit an entirely realistic portrait of its places and characters, endeavoring to force its reader to face what is most unpleasant and appalling, in order to understand it. / You and I -- Violet in blue, swimming -- Mole hunt -- We three make up a solitude -- Savages -- Other books. / Department of English

The Shadow Line is a collection of six short stories featuring characters whose lives take them near, and often across, the metaphorical Line that separates light from dark. Some of these characters indeed straddle that Line, living lives of apparent uprightness while harboring the seeds of inescapable menace. Some hover on the outside of some social structure and yearn to cross over, to leave the shadows of their lives outside for the apparent radiance within. And some live in worlds of brightness and comfort, only to find themselves confronting sudden moments of inexplicable terror. Told from various points of view, these stories invite the reader to listen to the characters — to explore the secrets they keep, the fears and doubts and dangers they face as they confront the darkness — and to inhabit with them, for a short time, the menacing world on either side of the Shadow Line. / A story to tell -- Grass grows greener -- Salvation -- Places -- The delivery -- The ivory tower. / Department of English

The thesis begins with an introductory chapter that explains the problems that short story theorists encounter when they try to define the short story genre. Part of the problem results from the lack of a definition of the short story in the Aristotelian sense. A looser, less traditional definition of literary genres helps solve some of the problem. Six short stories follow the introduction. "Billy and Me," "Queen of Hearts," "The Whiskey Man," and "Psychedelic Trash Cans" are representative of traditional short stories. "Mourning Coffee" and "Seven X Seven" might very well fit into other genres, but even these stories fit a loose definition of the short story genre.