Southern writer Ellen Glasgow once told an audience that “the longer one lives in this world of hazard and disaster, the more reckless one should become . . . in the matter of words.” Between the 1880s and the 1940s, opportunities for southern women writers like Glasgow increased dramatically, first bolstered by readership demands for southern stories in northern periodicals and followed by their acceptance into the southern literary canon during the 1920s-30s Southern Renaissance movement. And yet, it remained difficult for southern women writers to be reckless with words. Confined by magazine requirements and sociocultural expectations, writers often used regional settings to attract publishers and readers. Once a readership was established, they sought to publish a collection of stories separate from popular magazine contexts. This project examines the selection and arrangement of previously-published magazine stories into first short story collections by Kate Chopin, Ellen Glasgow, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Katherine Anne Porter. Publishing a collection enabled authors to revise their stories outside of magazines’ requirements and provided the agency to arrange individual stories into a collective narrative. In “Arranging Stories,” I argue that selecting and ordering magazine stories for these collections was not arbitrary nor dictated by editors. Instead, it allowed women writers to privilege stories, or to contextualize a particular story by its proximity to other tales, as a form of sociopolitical commentary. This project, supported by archival research at ten institutional repositories, invites a reconsideration of women writers’ authorial control throughout the publication process.

How can a playwright share authorial control with a group of actors when creating a new play script? How does the individual playwright address matters of genre, form, style and structure to create a unifying theme, while remaining true to the dramatic intention and aesthetics of the group? What impact will the collaborators have on a playwright's work? Will they help or hinder the writing process? This exegesis closely follows the creation of a new play, The Woods, in a process where the playwright intended to facilitate a collaborative process with the actors rather than act as sole author. Issues arising in this mode of working include the real meaning of sole authorship, aesthetic integrity and creative power balance. The analysis of these issues will have relevance for theatre practitioners working in collaborative contexts.