<p> The goal of this thesis is to elucidate the nature of character perspective in regard to worldbuilding for a setting. My research involved delving into writing journal articles, examining the formatting of stories in how they introduced their settings, and general reading. My main focus was on fictional tales, especially those that used the traveler archetype. Also, I examined how the reader&rsquo;s view of the given world changes depending on the character whose eyes they are looking at the environment through. In my critical introduction, I address the issues and structure related to use of the traveler archetype in stories. In my own stories, I exemplify these characteristics by showing worlds from different perspectives. I conclude that the traveler archetype works well toward building a setting for the reader to explore due to the perspective it offers, because both the character&rsquo;s and the reader&rsquo;s eyes are fresh when making contact with the foreign.</p><p>

<p> <i>Bitter Soil: Mapping Generational Female Experiences Through Poetry</i> is a collection of creative writing made up of a methodological essay and forty-three poems. This collection, produced during my time in California State University, Long Beach&rsquo;s M.F.A. in Creative Writing program, explores both familial bonds and personal growth. The essay portion of this thesis uproots my family tree for closer inspection as I explain my subject matter, influences, and process, as well as the benefits and challenges of being a woman writer. The forty-three poems within my manuscript specifically focus on my grandmother, my mother, and myself, zeroing in on our experiences as women across three very different generations. These poems are broken into two parts: the first half is about the lives of my grandmother and my mother, and the second half is mostly about my own life, as well as the lives of several other women that have moved me. Essentially, the purpose of my thesis work is to communicate female stories, relationships, and power, using my own relatives as proof in a creative effort to honor the women that I know and inspire those that I do not.</p><p>

This is a collection of narrative nonfiction that spans forms: immersive journalism, quick character profiles, middling personal essays, and nostalgia in fragments, these works examine Sasquatch hunters, female mixed martial artists, absent fathers, Cuban punk rockers, and the gasps of an industry in decline.

This is the coming-of-age story of a twelve-year-old girl who lives in a Florida fishing village in 1968, and is thought to be retarded. On a birthday trip to see dolphins perform at a road side show she learns that they are captives simply because man believes he has the right of dominance over "dumb" animals. This emotionally conquered child develops a feeling of kinship to these dolphins and when, with outside help, she discovers that she is dyslexic, not retarded, it frees her to recognize that errors in thinking may exist at many levels. Her release from the trap of human ignorance allows her to devise a way to free the dolphins and guide them home to the sea.

Touch of AIDS: A Love Story is a memoir covering the ten years since my husband, Steven's HIV positive diagnosis in 1987. The story begins when we find our circumstances redefined and our future challenged by the plague of this century. Steven's inability to withstand the toxic effects of the earliest approved antiviral drugs leads us to turn to alternative therapies. After his conversion to AIDS we return to Western medicine but continue on a quest that takes us from Taoist studies at home in Florida to sacred Navajo ceremonies in Arizona. As Steven finds that healing comes in great part from the journey itself and that he is stronger physically, emotionally and spiritually than he was before his HIV diagnosis, I realize that we can live with fear as long as we don't become its victims. Love and hope empower our lives as we live with AIDS.

IN THE BLUE OF THE EVENING is a historical novel which depicts the rise and fall of the friendship of two young, French-Canadian women in the mill town of Collins, Maine, during World War II. Micheline Simard and Lorraine Coutiere share a secret which upends their families, in a tight knit community where tradition, religious values, and reputation matter most. Micheline learns to think and act for herself, learning the power of a lie, while Lorraine must struggle to discern lies, and how to break out of the shadow of convention and lead her own life. The novel presents multiple points of view in the third person, which lets the reader follow the plot as it moves forward in multiple locations. Like Ian McEwan's Atonement and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams, IN THE BLUE OF THE EVENING uses mistaken identities, secrets, and discoveries for dramatic effect.

Mating Call is a memoir set in the Pacific Northwest during the 1990s, in what Spin Magazine calls "Seattle's Golden Age." The story begins with my arrival in the West and a self-inflicted broken heart, a relationship I had severed due to "missing pieces." The quest is to find these pieces, and throughout the search the memoir analyzes love and relationships for Generation X. The quest takes seven years, during which the narrative explores Seattle's breweries and bedrooms, and the Northwest's rainforests and volcanoes, all the while investigating interpersonal chemistry, sex, and friendship. For all the searching, the missing pieces are actually discovered by accident, when happenstance deals my heart a second blow; the quest is over, and I return East.

A character discovering and testing the limits of his emotional or psychological range most interests me. What will he choose to do? Stay within his old boundaries? Or try and go beyond them? What does he learn about himself in the process? And, finally, what price will be exacted, either for his staying where he is, or for his choosing a new level of self-knowledge? "The Short Reign Of Sultan Osman and Other Stories" is a collection of short stories set in either the United States, Greece, or Brazil, and ranging in time from 1972 to today. Each story presents its protagonist with challenges unique to a specific time and place. In most of these stories, the protagonists are driven by an urge for love or for mastery, and these urges send them across landscapes of delusion or folly before they can arrive at some sense of self-knowledge.

Up till now, Florida detective fiction has prowled through the hot, sexy, slightly bizarre babel of South Florida. Deadlift reveals a different Florida. DEADLIFT, set in the mid-1980s, is situated in central Florida in Winter Haven, located between Orlando and Tampa. DEADLIFT reveals Bubba Simms, a Sheriff's Department sergeant, who kills the man who raped his wife and, then, conceals the crime. He leaves the police community to become a private detective. While he searches for truth in his detective work, he is compelled to face the reality of his crumbling marriage. Bubba Simms begins to find the isolation of Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. While the novel is action-driven, DEADLIFT depicts the humor, character, and community of a Florida that clings to the traditional South while being changed by the influx of others.

HELLO, CLOTHING is a collection of lyric poems about the connections between human beings, following an ekphrastic model that seeks truths about the world “second-hand”: through the language and images of other artists. A large section of the poems address the life and work of composer Morton Feldman, while many others explore the world of cinema or photography. The poems are particularly conscious of received forms. The collection takes to heart Harold Bloom’s assertion that “every poem is about another poem” and interprets this dictum as a celebration of formal structure. Whether through a traditional model such as the sonnet, sestina or villanelle; a stanzaic form derived from Elizabeth Bishop; or the re-writing of a single line by Denis Johnson, the book attempts to re-invent the work of its own inspiration, with the goal of discovering the inexhaustable pleasure of repetition.