It is the time of war in Vietnam, of civil rights trailblazing, of social upheaval, and Kurt and Ellis Frye, an immigrant father and his first-generation American son from the small farming town of Homer, Colorado, are forced to navigate the changing American West in absence of one another. After discovering an aptitude for pitching--especially the volatile knuckleball--Ellis takes it upon himself to become a professional ballplayer, leaving the wheat farm he was to inherit from his father and starting off across the country on a journey that will force him to encounter what it means to be an authentic person. Meanwhile, Kurt, his health failing, struggles to tend the farm on his own, forced to realize the gravity of loneliness in both the departure of his son and the death of his wife. The unpredictable flow of life brings the two back together, and, burdened with the choice of whether or not to reclaim the home they built together, discover one another's autonomy, the life they knew not. A Lonely Place Where the Heart Beats Loud is a story about baseball, of farming, of life in a changing America, but more importantly it examines what it means to experience homecoming and what we inherit from those we care for.

"Discount Ceremony" explores characters who find themselves in adrift states, searching for meaning and connection. Elements of magical realism present themselves in reflection of emotion and theme. Many of the characters within this collection are grappling with feelings of stagnancy, seeking solace and transcendence within small moments of intimacy. In "Dirt", a lonely office worker seeks comfort in the form of a new pet, which happens to be a pile of dirt. In "Static," a woman in stasis discovers a mysterious tree growing in her closet. In "Jane Untitled," the character of Jane grapples with a fear of aging while dealing with perpetually wet parents and a disappearing boyfriend. In "Discount Ceremony," Jacey tries to cope with relentlessly greasy hair while seeking happiness and intimacy in the small scope of her daily life. "The Sister" finds Jason encountering a pseudo-family member who brings comfort despite the lack of biological relation. In "The Melamorphosis," Mason's body transforms into that of his girlfriend Mel, prompting a re-examination of selfhood and their relationship. "At a Bar in Texas" explores the empty spaces Carson's life has come to involve as she ponders the importance of her new braces. In "HAZMAT," Maggie is haunted by her use of humor as a shield, and experiences increasing alienation when her world starts fading out. In "Mute," a radio DJ discovers a skull in her laundry basket, leading to a downward spiral of identity erosion. "The Cactuses are Turning Gray" involves Penny trying to cope with life in a decaying world, seeking connection through Dane, her only neighbor. Finally, in "Travis in Hollywood," Travis finds his world slowly unraveling as his best friend ascends to stardom, leaving him feeling disconnected from the elements of life he finds meaning in.

The collection of works includes two short stories (“Sine Die”; “Revolutionaries”) and excerpts from the novel, Milk River. The pieces feature Montana women haunted by mothers past and present, amid the colonialist echoes of the western landscape. Questions of inheritance, the quiet rebellion of women, and what it means to possess land itself recur.

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The Secret and the Sacred Are Siblings is a collection of fiction divided into three sections. The first, "Two Dispatches from Jesusland," contains two stories set in the United States, among disaffected fundamentalists. The second, "Three Koulev-Ville Stories," contains two short stories and a novella set in Haiti, among expatriates and locals. The third section contains two excerpts from The Sexual Lives of Missionaries, a novel-in-progress.

19th-century Latin American science fiction has begun to draw the attention of many scholars who focus on the tradition written in Argentina, Uruguay, Brasil, and Mexico. However, newspapers, magazines, poetry collections, and books from Peru, Chile, and Colombia during the same period also included science fiction as well. My dissertation proposes to rescue these works and make them valuable for literary purposes. My first chapter focuses on two Peruvian serial novels, Lima de aquí a cien años [Lima in a Hundred Years] and Cusco de aquí a cien años [Cusco in a Hundred Years], both published in newspaper El Comercio in 1843, and were written by two authors: Julian M. del Portillo and "u201cCarlos de A"u201d. The novels are based on the epistolary exchange between a limeño and a cusqueño in a fictional 1943. The historical events after emancipating with Spain (1821), especially the Peru-Bolivian Confederation (1836-1839), form the background of these serial novels. Both narrate the future history of these two cities and imagine what would happen if an Inca Empire had been reinstated and survived the unsettled period after Independence. The second chapter focus on Chilean novels ¡Una vision del porvenir! El espejo del mundo en el año 1975 [A Vision of the Future! The Mirror of the World in the Year 1975], by Benjamin Tallman (1875); and Desde Júpiter: Curioso viaje de un santiaguino magnetizado [From Jupiter: The Curious Voyage of a Magnetized Man from Santiago], by Francisco Miralles (1877, 1886). The first one deals with the modernization of Valparaíso and Santiago. The second one is an account of a Chilean man who is being transported to Jupiter. Both fictions attempt to display Chile as a paradigm of progress during the period known as "u201cliberal republic"u201d (1861-1891). In my third chapter, I analyze two important writers of 19th-century Colombia: Soledad Acosta de Samper, who wrote a short story called "u201cBogotá en el año 2000. Una pesadilla"u201d [Bogotá in the Year 2000. A Nightmare]; and José Asunción Silva, who was the author of two poems ("u201cFutura"u201d and "u201cZoospermos"u201d) appeared in his poetry collection Gotas amargas [Bitter Tears]. Acosta de Samper published her short story several times in women magazines until 1905. Gotas amargas was published posthumously in 1918. Both texts deal with the idea of a bleak future in Colombia in the form of critical reflection (Acosta de Samper) or parody (Silva). / Giancarlo Stagnaro

A Year in the City is a mosaic novel set in contemporary an historical Sydney. It is 70, 000 words long, and contains twelve different narratives, with the American author Mark Twain appearing as a fictional character in the opening and closing. A Year in the City seeks to represent the fragmented, multicultural nature of Sydney through a diverse range of narrators and styles. Each of the chapters is linked through the themes of belonging, race, land ownership. The Sydney portrayed in the novel is what Leonie Sandercock called a Mongrel City, a metaphor used to characterise the &quotnew urban condition in which difference, otherness, fragmentation, splintering, multiplicity, heterogeneity, diversity, [and] plurality prevail.&quot A Year in the City intends to celebrate cultural and racial heterogeneity. It is accompanied by a research dissertation of 30, 000 words, that investigates the project of writing about the city and the theme of race. It explores the imagined city through the work of James Donald and Ross Gibson, and addresses the challenge of capturing the lived experience in text, as theorised by Henri Lefebvre. The mosaic structure of A Year in the City borrows from Michel de Certeau's theory of walking the city and Walter Benjamin's flaneur. The issue of race is discussed in relation to the representation of white and non-white characters against the dominant white society.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / I thought a Euro coin would be a good main character for my story, the perfect medium to go everywhere and traverses social strata, gender and culture. The story and character are a pretext to visit different European countries, following the uncontrolled trip of the coin from one’s pocket to someone else’s wallet. Through the point of view of the coin, we are able to apprehend slices of daily life in Europe, of the actual state of the unity of the countries, at different levels, political, administrative and cultural. Through the coin’s experiences we see the reactions of ordinary people to the new currency: resentment of the way Europe is changing, indifference to whatever may occur, or the feeling that idealistic values are in danger when facing Kafkaesque bureaucratic decisions or the fact that 380 combinations are needed to translate every speech in every language of the Union. I chose a low-value coin rather than a banknote, because of its greater insignificance. A five cents coin comes and goes. The novel is also a reflection on money, its power, the triumph of capitalism in countries formerly communists or socialists and examine if this power is a “necessary evil” or a human weakness that needs to be reformed if possible. The novel is written using literary constraints, so the theoretical component of the thesis presents a short history of constraints as they have been explored, analysed and put in practice by OuLiPo (A Primer of Potential Literature) and authors like Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau or Christian Bök. Some of the constraints I used were unexpected like the use of daily News Agencies news (Reuters, AFP) dealing with Europe and the E.U. that I discovered and incorporated in the story while writing it. I believe that constraints can trigger creativity. The strategies I used while writing have been identified, analysed and categorized, as well as the solutions I found to sometimes overcome these constraints and keeping the novel readable and consistent.

The thesis Blood Ties is a novel in the epic fantasy tradition. It is intended to be the first of The Castings Trilogy. A synopsis of the second and third books of the trilogy is also included. The exegesis, “‘Kings. What a good idea.’: Monarchy in epic fantasy fiction”, examines some of the reasons writers from democratic countries may choose to use monarchical political structures in epic fantasy novels. It considers evidence from folktale research, primate behavioural studies, literary traditions, both ancient and modern, and the effect of religious doctrine and history on the symbolic role of the monarch. Folktales are found to have had very little effect on the role of kings in epic fantasy, which has been influenced by a combination of literary traditions, including the Arthurian saga and the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott. More profoundly, the meaning of the king’s role has been influenced by the Christian mythos in two ways: the king is a Christ surrogate who sacrifices his own safety for the good of the body politic and, in being successful against evil, restores a version of Paradise/Eden for his people.

The creative component of a Doctor of Creative Arts thesis submitted under the general title The shelter of honour. / Doctor of Creative Arts