<p> <i>POISON</i> is a collection of loosely interrelated short stories chronicling one family&rsquo;s struggles with drugs, alcohol, poverty, gang affiliation, death, disease, and depravity in Los Angeles, California. Most of the stories are set in the 1990s, and channel the trends of the decade, especially those specific to LA. The chronology of the collection is scattered, the dates and details inconsistent or conflicting. POISON aims to emphasize the imperfect nature of memory, the ways in which recollection at once dictates our lives as well as dismantles it. The collection is accompanied by a fictional family tree and a nonfictional photo album containing real photographs of the semi-fictionalized characters depicted throughout the stories. While the photos may display a sense of contentment, when coupled with the collection&rsquo;s content, the reader may begin to interrogate the ways in which memory severely skews reality.</p><p>

<p> <i>The Daily Special</i> is a collection of seven short stories written during my Master of Fine Arts for Creative Writing career at California State University, Long Beach. The stories are linked thematically through a relation of food to a character&rsquo;s psyche in order to exemplify characterizations or conflicts. The element of food is either mundane or centered; however, all the stories respond with the emotion of fear that later results in an act of acceptance. The fear stems from two outcomes, not fitting in or losing something of value. The characters have to face their fears and accept their current situations in order to move forward.</p><p>

Magister Artium - MA (English) / Visklippie and other Cape Town stories is a collection of short stories, inspired by my experiences having grown up in the 1960s and 1970s in Cape Town. This is a fictional work that, however, uses memory and oral history as the main sources for the stories told. I have conceived my project in the context of South African short stories from the mid-twentieth century, a very significant part of our literary history, since it encapsulates the volatile years of Apartheid. Unlike most of the writing of this period, my stories will try to highlight individual experiences, especially female subjectivity. My fictional engagement is also narrowed down by region since I will focus more on the short stories which emerge out of and represent Cape Town. This collection will aim to reflect the diverse voices of the people who have lived in divided communities in Cape Town. The stories will cover the period from the 1960s to contemporary times. They will be stories told from the perspective of children and women, but a few will be focalised through marginal male characters. The collection will be grounded in local community experience and centre on family relationships where there is triumph over political and personal adversity. The voices that emanate from these stories are seldom represented despite the great diversity in South African literature. These voices will sometimes emanate from the perspective of individuals condemned and ostracised by the same people dispossessed by Apartheid. The stories will aim for individual perspectives, complex interior explorations, ironies and paradoxes that will reveal fleeting connections and triumphs despite adversity.

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The Blue Highway is a collection of eleven literary short stories and ten miniature that depict men in trouble, searching for a code to live by. The miniatures are repressed memories, appearing suddenly like the tips of ice bergs and act as stepping stones (tension bridges) between the larger works. The stories begin at the end with "Time Out", the story of Frank, a down and out homeless vet at the end of his rope. Then we begin the journey along "The Blue Highway" with Danny and his gang of teenage bandits, taking themselves to Disney World to see if they can recapture their lost dream. On our journey we will meet Mark, the ex-killer, an old Cuban fisherman who will not give up his honor, a young man on a way to a war who discovers a fantastic treasure, a soldier on his way home again, two MP's who nearly kill the wrong man, we will spend a night on an African savannah with wild hyenas and finally, meet a grandfather who discovers the one gift which might save his family. The same gift which might save Frank as well.

IS THIS TRIP NECESSARY? is a collection of narrative poems portraying journeys. Section I focuses on the speaker's grandfather's journey from Lithuania to Ohio and on the speaker's Cleveland childhood. In Section II, an adult speaker, a psychiatrist, portrays the inner journeys of his patients and his own psychological development. Section III is a coming of age account of worldwide travel. Section IV explores the home the speaker finds in Florida, and its connections to the world. Literary sources for this book include Chaucer and Shakespeare's depictions of journeys and a sense of culture, profession, and place. Whitman expressed American dynamism, pride, and break with tradition. Several contemporary poets deal with migration, inner journeys, and/or health including the writer-healers Richard Berlin, Rafael Campo, and Cortney Davis. Poetic forms used in this book include sonnets, a double sonnet crown, sestinas, prose poems, list poems, abecedarians, haikus, and originally structured verse.

SATISFACTION GUARANTEED AND OTHER STORIES was a collection of dark short fiction that explored the nature of hubris. Hubris was not limited to the definition of overbearing pride and arrogance, but bore a connection to love, curiosity, greed, and covetousness. In each story, the main characters' hubris sparked a desire that often lead to extreme actions. The stories' characters ranged in age from five years to centuries old. Their backgrounds were also diverse: a condemned spirit, a sculptor, a succubus posing as a psychiatrist and her empathic patient, a Rosarian, an entomologist, and a mural artist, The plots of the stories were simple and drawn from elements of myth and legend. In the essence of Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James, the stories developed the uncanny to give introspection concerning the darker human qualities.

abstract: A Brief Theory of Entanglement examines the philosophical consequences that quantum mechanics has on our lives, our bodies, and our relationships. By framing themselves within the context of "daughter universes”—the theory that each choice on our plane of consciousness spawns an alternative universe in which the opposite choice was made—these poems consider pain and the power we choose to give it while imagining a multitude of worlds in which everything—even grief—occurs very differently. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Creative Writing 2016

abstract: Raised on card-catalogues, then expected to save the world with microchips, there is a generation that was left straddling two millennia. Often lumped in with the X’ers or Millennials, this generation didn’t grow up with or without technology, technology grew up with them. The poems in The Aerodynamics of Hunger strike a balance between the easy-going materialism of the 90’s and our current culture of instant gratification, between the tendency to treat science like a God and prescribe God like science. These poems see straight through the world of hypersex and click-bait, yet they admit their complicity in its creation and distribution. They watch the world become connected on a new level, but testify to the resulting struggle of place one’s self in relation to something, anything. The burden is great, but journeying through it is an undeniable pleasure. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Creative Writing 2016

abstract: This essay is an exploration of Michael Holladay's interests in style and influence related to his writing and overall writing process. I've chosen a selection of books that both reflect my interests as a writer, books that I've loved and have informed me in the past which continue to inform and inspire on each re-read (Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, for example) and also books I hadn't read and needed to in order to challenge myself with writing I haven't been exposed to yet so I can continue to grow (I hadn't, for instance, read Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson or Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel before preparation for this essay.) The fiction I've chosen to discuss strikes a balance between favorites that have formed me up to this point and new work to "fill in the gaps" of books I needed to read. Additionally, I've chosen a selection of books on craft to provide a lens for thinking about writing. Finally, I've also included work in other genres that inform my fiction (Ryan van Meter's creative nonfiction essays, If You Knew Then What I Know Now and Andrew Haigh's film, Weekend.) I've intentionally chosen work that is diverse in both form and content. I have more linear fiction represented (William Trevor, for example) matched with work that's fragmentary and language focused (Christine Schutt's Nightwork among others) since I'm interested in how linear form and fragmentation can intersect, and I've been experimenting with both during my time in the program. And in terms of content, the majority of the work speaks to my interest in how region, specifically the South, impresses itself on sexuality and gender, specifically queer or decentered sexuality and gender. So I have books with a heavy focus on region (Daddy's by Lindsay Hunter and Girl Trouble by Holly Goddard Jones) and work that explores the complexities of sexuality and identity (Michael Cunningham, Edmund White, Alexander Chee, and I'll mention Haigh's film Weekend again because it's always worth mentioning again.) These works will help synthesize and bring together my interests in style, language, structure, and form, and in content. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Creative Writing 2016