My dissertation is a memoir based on my childhood experiences growing up with a mentally ill mother. She exhibited violence both passive and aggressive, and the memoir explores my relationship with her and my relationship with the world through her. "Damned Good Daughter" developed with my interest in creative nonfiction as a genre. I came to it after studying poetry, discovering that creative nonfiction offers a form that accommodates both the lyric impulse in poetry and the shaping impulse of story in fiction. In addition, the genre makes a place for the first person I in relation to the order and meaning of a life story. Using reverse chronology, my story begins with the present and regresses toward childhood, revealing the way life experiences with a mentally ill parent build on one another.

What is the boundary between fiction and nonfiction? What happens if the line between the two is crossed? Can we possibly recall events in our lives exactly as they happened? In creative nonfiction, such as memoir, the audience expects the writer to recall things exactly as they happened, with no embellishments, re-ordering, additions, or subtractions. It seems as if authors of creative nonfiction are bound to be questioned about events, nitpicked on details, challenged on memories, and accused of portraying real-life people the "wrong" way. Yet when the writer creates fiction, it seems to go the other way: readers like to think there are parallels between an author and her stories. Readers congratulate themselves for finding the similarities between the two, and instead of focusing on the crafted story at hand, try to search out which parts are "true" and which are embellished. Does any of this matter, though; don't all stories tell a kind of truth? We have an insatiable urge to classify, to "know" the truth, but truth isn't merely a recollection of cold facts; likewise, a story isn't any less true if it's fiction.

No description available.

abstract: In this dissertation, organizational whistleblowing is guided by the methods for writing Creative Nonfiction. That is to say, a true story is told in a compelling and creative, easy to read manner, so that a broader audience, both academic and non-academic alike, can understand the stories told. For this project, analytic concepts such as antecedents, organizational culture, resistance and dissidence, social support, and ethics are embedded in the narrative text. In this piece, the author tells the story of a whistleblowing process, from beginning to end. Using the techniques advised by Gutkind (2012) questions and directions for research and analytic insight are integrated with the actual scenes of the whistleblowing account. The consequences of whistleblowing are explored, including loss of status, social isolation, and a variety of negative ramifications. In order to increase confidentiality in the dissertation, pseudonyms and adapted names and locations have been used to focus on the nature of the whistleblowing experience rather than the specific story. The author ends the dissertation with reflection on whistleblowing through the insight gathered from his firsthand account, suggesting advice for future whistleblowers and directions for future organizational research on whistleblowing. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2015

As is typical to the way I write essays, I did not understand the goal of this collection until I wrote the last essay, “Blue Heron Goodbye.” Up until that point I was calling the collection “Why We Need Bloodhounds.” This title felt sufficiently representative to me of the goal of the collection because in this essay, I use discussions canvassing the Bloodhounds' strong sense of smell to focus my discussion about the world of the heart. However, when I wrote “Blue Heron Goodbye,” I realized I wasn't only interested in the struggles of the human heart (a broad topic too heavy for any collection) but finding a place for my heart to live. What I mean by that, is that everyone has struggles and joys but what makes living feel worthwhile, to me, is that I can examine those emotions in a place of calm, away from the jarring pace of the whizzing world. In the essay, “Blue Heron Goodbye”, the heron is surrounded by man's technology of speed—a concrete freeway and zipping cars—yet the heron finds solitude by her churning river. I find solitude in my essays. This collection's goal is the heron's goal: to find the hidden hope of self-examination in solitude amid chaos.

Wires and Light is an experimental story cycle composed of fiction and hybrid pieces, which blend poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction together. The characters in these pieces are propelled by uncertainty and a strong desire to be connected to places, people. If these characters do find the connections they are searching for, most of these ―joining‖ moments are fleeting. A girl, straight out of high school, misses her ―wonder boy,‖ befriends a woman nearly a decade older, fists her in the desert while California‘s on fire. A woman who dives horses off the Atlantic City Steel Pier is forced to leave her glamorous, dangerous career, which has been her entire life. The same woman meets a grieving mother years later on a train, wrestles with the idea of loving this woman, tries to understand the wall between them. A boy loses his virginity and has trouble understanding the power of his body. A young girl loses her blue horse, her best friend. Years later the same girl will deal with depression and self-mutilation, and will heal on her own. She will meet a child in a coffee shop and help her heal, too. These characters yearn for love, freedom and wholeness, and although the search is painful, they must learn to find happiness by accepting the presence of pain. These pieces are intended to show how pain affects the body, how wires can bind bodies and light can burn skin, but they don‘t have to. Wires can be used to collect love, keep it fastened and safe, like a guiding light.

Failure to Yield is a collection of creative nonfiction that explores themes of presence and emotional connection and expression. The seven essays, which include three flash essays, explore the themes by reflecting on such topics as marriage, parent-child relationships and addiction. The collection is woven together by the author's relationships with her parents and children and by her experiences growing up in a small town in Iowa.

A creative nonfiction thesis, Luke's Mama is a memoir of personal essays that explore how the birth of my son has affected the ways that I relate within and interpret different areas of my life. Chapter I, Introduction, identifies personal and ethical concerns involved in telling my story and explores how others have handled similar issues. Chapter II, Family, illustrates how my relationship with my family of origin has changed since I've become a parent and also how my new family and I interact with society. Chapter III, Calling, depicts my struggle in finding a balance between work and family priorities. Chapter IV, Partner, presents a contrast between my relationship with my partner before and after my son's birth. Chapter V, Parent, displays the beginning of my ever-growing relationship with my son and sense of parenthood.

This thesis disrupts the popular narrative of high-functioning autistic individuals as the ideal and capable special needs people who are worthy of our attention. It characterizes the author’s nonverbal autistic sister as a charming, cunning, even diabolical figure who cannot be pinned to a single interpretation - a figure beyond understanding. Defying convention both stylistically and thematically, this thesis provides a nuanced, in-depth view of a family with special needs as each member copes in different and contradictory ways.

Plowing by Moonlight is a creative nonfiction exploration of the relationship between the people of Bainbridge Island, Washington, and the food they grow, eat, and share.