Original short story.

Magnolia Star Route is a collection of short fiction named for a road that connects the town of Nederland to the city of Boulder, Colorado. The stories share the common aspect of all being set in and around Nederland and contain overlapping scenes and characters that unite the stories into the form of a composite novel. The critical introduction, ?My Unreliability? describes how I used the format from Sherwood Anderson?s Winesburg, Ohio and James Joyce?s Dubliners to structure a collection heavily influenced by the writings of Salman Rushdie and Paul Auster. The introduction begins by describing the influence growing up in Nederland had on me as a young writer and the effect that moving to Mississippi had on my perspective as I continued my writing career.

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This collection of nine fiction stories explores the journeys of men and women who find themselves unable to continue on the path they've set for themselves. So often, the roads we follow are dictated by social conditioning. This collection considers how are paths are predetermined by social norms and follows the characters as they react to unexpected obstacles encountered in common scenarios. Will they forge new paths? Turn back? Or will they take a detour and return to their original road?

This thesis includes a novel of eight short stories and a critical preface. The preface begins with a section placing the stories in their literary historical context in regards to masculinity theory. It goes on to discuss the craft of fictionalizing autobiographical stories. Finally, the preface talks about the choice of a first person narrator. Each of the stories should stand alone, though they follow the narrator's life for a number of years. Todd Welles is the narrator of all the stories, with the exception of a few. In the stories where Todd does not do all of the narration, he is interrupted by the narration of his "friend," Percy 2 Hard Welles, III.

Sometimes It Just Pours and Pours is a collection of short stories about women coming of age and navigating the boundaries between community and isolation. Many of the stories deal with families – the ones we are given and the ones we make for ourselves – and how those relationships change us. / 2031-01-01T00:00:00Z

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True Selves: Narrative Distance in Stories of Fiction and Nonfiction consists of a scholarly preface and four creative works. The preface discusses narrative distance as used in both fiction and nonfiction, and as compares to other narrative agents such as point of view, especially in contemporary creative writing. The selection of stories examines relationships, especially familial, and themes of isolation, community, and memory. Collection includes two chapters of a novel-in-progress, Fences, short fiction story "Trees and Furniture," and creative nonfiction essays, "Floating" and "On the Sparrow."

The preface, "Against Buses: Charles Baxter and the Contemporary Epiphany" deals with the epiphany as a potential ending to short stories. Baxter holds that epiphanies are trite and without purpose in today's fiction. I argue that Baxter's view, while not without merit, is limiting. Beginning with James Joyce and Katherine Anne Porter and moving to my own work, I discuss how some epiphanies, particularly false ones, can enhance rather than detract from excellent fiction. Five short stories make up the remainder of this thesis: "Dedication," "Taking it with You," "Transition to Flowers," "Profile in Courage," and "Henderson Street Bazaar."