"Arbeit Macht Frei," which is translated, "Work Will Make You Free," is a surreal drama that sporadically and without regard to traditional chronological order spans the years of 1931-1947 in Nazi Germany. It is many stories of humanity and its strengths and weaknesses, its triumphs and atrocities, melded into theatrical representation as men and women who are interred in a concentration camp unwillingly build the walls that hold them under Nazi oppression. It is also the specific stories of four individual characters. Heinrich is the camp commander whose work is to construct and run the camp. Herta is the German doctor who is charged with furthering the false science of "eugenics" by experimenting on both her Jewish victim, Rachel, and the commander's wife, Klara. Rachel and Klara are characters who lead parallel lives with the exception of their perceived racial impurity or purity as seen by the culture which surrounds them. Although "Arbeit" looks closely at the stereotypical roles of Nazi commander and doctor of macabre experimentation and successfully attempts to subvert these stereotypes, it is essentially the story of the Jewish and German women and their similarities under oppression, degredation and horror that is worth of minute analysis and representation in the modern theater.

Sandy Kolman Laycox received her Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A few years later, she began her writing career at Walkabout Press, a publishing company in Charlotte, North Carolina. At this time, she also began working on her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans, which she subsequently received. She currently works as an editor in Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and their dog.

Lady Grimm is a conceptual assemblage. A substrate of fairy tales, fables, and nursery rhymes provide a basis for transformative and macabre frames, specifically concerning a stillbirth in 1940s Scotland. The collection utilizes the folklore genre to navigate a world of uncertainty and realities too difficult for its speakers to face. It further critiques the assumption of voice being restricted to human cognition. Animalistic totems as sea lions, peacocks, rabbits, and iguanas are some of the spirits summoned in order to explore themes such as motherhood, irreversible loss, abandonment, and choice within choicelessness. The collection begins in tragedy but gestures toward redemption as it maneuvers through strange & haunting imagery, mystic & surreal narratives. Ultimately, Lady Grimm illuminates a path towards perseverance in a coldly indifferent world.

This is a memoir, lyrical in prose and unconventional in form, that interrogates illusions of control through lenses of ecology, recovery, and family dynamics.

My Impending Adulthood: Quarterlife Crisis and Beyond is a collection of personal essays that chronicles the time before, during and shortly after the narrator's quarterlife crisis. The further removed from childhood she grows, the more the narrator clings to aspects of her youth she fears she'll lose when she resigns to enter the adult word-a place she believes is stifling and terrifying. Each essay in this collection serves as a lens through which the adult world is examined, admired, feared, avoided and misunderstood as the narrator works to accept that she must grow up, despite nearly three decades of persistent resistance. The essays illustrate ways in which innocence is incrementally lost, while at the same time celebrating ways in which portions of this innocence is preserved and appreciated. This collection aspires to give a voice to readers in their twenties whose struggles are often ignored by the literary world.

This novel is the first-person narrative of an underachieving twenty-eight-year-old journalist who convinces himself that he can find fulfillment by climbing the Matterhorn, a dream he once shared with his older, idolized brother, who died before they could achieve it. Forsaking a marriage-minded girlfriend and fledgling sports reporting career in California, Stanley "Rabbit” Goodman decides to sell or abandon everything he owns that can't fit into a backpack, head to Europe, find his brother's former climbing partner and scale the mountain, or die trying. By blending humor with mysticism and action with introspection, Rabbit's entertaining tale poignantly transcends his personal experiences to illustrate the universal human conflicts that arise when one attempts to turn a dream into reality.

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In 7 composite stories--shifting from the roads of Southern Colorado neighborhoods, the fields and unpaved roads of Northern New Mexico, and the streets of Culver City, California--Penitence follows Relles Ortiz and the bleak peripheral existence of the voiceless suburban people living in disorder and disorientation within the harshness of their common American surroundings and circumstances. Relles' story is told in a fragmented and laconic style as Relles explores the flashes of his violent past, his severed relationships as well as confronting his stubborn addictive personality. In "Blues Skies Under Culver City," Relles recounts his troubled marriage and relationship with his daughter after years lost in the Army serving in Macedonia. In "Return to Cacaville" we learn that Relles' problems are perhaps greater than himself as they seem to be patterned by his familial tree. "Backyard Marriage" recounts the marriage of Relles' mother and father from the perspective of his Uncle Lolo and the neighborhood priest, Father Dwyer. In "Hamburgers in Macedonia," Relles recounts the main source of his inner demons--a tragic tour through Bosnia and Northern Macedonia. "Penance" and "Laundromat Story" both beg the question: are individuals 'fucked up' or are they simply 'fuck-ups.' In the "Highland," Relles learns that his actions and decisions perhaps can rise above his weighted thoughts and relentless memories. Overall, these stories mark this author's journey from honest journaling to honest story-telling and crafting of fiction. / Graduation date: 2004

A young American woman goes to China looking for quiet and respite from campus activism but finds herself drawn into a love triangle with two Chinese dissidents. Through these relationships she becomes involved in the explosive demonstrations at Tiananmen Square and her life will never be the same.

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