A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.

THE SAINTS OF BANIAS is a novel set in a fictional slavetown during the Reconstruction Era. The work seeks to blend myth, magic, and history to create a world that is both believable and otherworldly. The novel follows Beah, an ex-slave girl travelling to the town of Banias in hopes of finding her mother; Prophet Moon, an itinerant vision-seer who offers to help Beah with her goal; and the founder of the town, Claude Banias, who struggles to protect Banias from bloodthirsty radicals. As the characters’ lives intertwine, they face more challenges and secrets. THE SAINTS OF BANIAS is loosely based on the biblical story of David and Bathsheba, with Claude acting as David, Beah as Bathsheba, and Prophet Moon as a hybrid of Nathan and Uriah. The novel primarily explores destructive love, the value of hope, and the price of preserving a culture.

LIFE IS GOOD—IF BUT BRIEFLY is a contemporary, satirical novel written in the third person. Walter Dingles, the story’s protagonist, is an introspective twenty-two-year-old with a knack for screwing things up. After finishing college, Walter realizes he’s emotionally ill prepared to face the world on his own. He moves back home vowing to get his shit together. He lands a job at his old high school, but his efforts are exacerbated when his grandfather’s porn collection ends up in the principal’s office, he unknowingly begins taking his mother’s estrogen supplements, and family secrets come to the fore. In the end, Walter comes to accept himself. Set in the heartland, LIFE IS GOOD—IF BUT BRIEFLY plays against the region’s reputation as a bastion of conservatism and wholesome family values, while expressing the mood and anxiety of a generation coming of age in a down economy.

Through a Glass Darkly is about grief, ghosts, monsters, and mothers. To be more specific, it is a haunted story about the silencing of women, particularly female authors. Its roots draw inspiration from a darker version of Mary Shelley, and the lives of female authors before and after her. While researching Evelyn Buchanan, a socialite from the nineteenth century, Ophelia Williams becomes infected by an otherworldly house with a history. As her narrative intertwines with the fragmented findings of Evelyn and Evelyn’s mysteriously stolen novel, Ophelia experiences postpartum psychosis, brought on by her own complicated family history and personal trauma. Together, Ophelia and her ghosts work to unsilence Evelyn Buchannan. To do this, she and they must rise above their own versions of grief, or what time has painted as monstrous hysteria. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

"This paper presents an annotated bibliography of Florida fiction covering the years 1940-1952. The term Florida fiction as applied to this work indicates book length novels which have Florida as a background or setting for the action of the story. Despite careful checking of many sources it is entirely possible that some fiction within the scope of this definition has escaped inclusion because there is no complete bibliography in print. However, every effort has been made to include titles of fiction with settings in Florida published during the period"--Introduction. / "January, 1954." / Typescript. / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Louis Shores, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-88) and index.

This manuscript is a novel exploring the complexities of friendship, the violence of unexpected death, and the way in which external environment and consciousness are mutually influential, sometimes almost merging.

The New American Book of James, told through the comic first-person perspective of Dickie James, explores a world where the mythic elements of Christianity become hyperbolically realized as an extension of Dickie’s tormented psyche. As he grows larger, hungrier, and more desperate, his sins never fail to evoke Old Testament retribution while he both seeks and dreads New Covenant redemption. His downward spiral coincides with his father’s, Pastor Daniel James, who’s certain he knows how all stories end. Set in the swampy Tidewater region of Virginia, the book opens when Dickie, at the age of eight, experiences a vivid night terror and claims it was a demon. His father clumsily attempts an exorcism, traumatizing his son and robbing him of sleep. Daniel, believing he’s cast out a demon, grows increasingly fanatical, and as Dickie ages his doubts not just about Christianity but also his father deepen, even as he convinces himself that he is the cause of the plague-like disasters wreaking havoc on his town. The New American Book of James encompasses seven years and features characters haunted by demons: Dickie’s ferocious best friend, Rodney; Dickie’s mother, Maggie, whose religious attachment to her kitchen counterbalances the faith of her husband; and middle-aged seductress Ms. Miller, drawn to Dickie’s mannish size and guileless nature. Dickie wrestles with the analogous influences of faith and despair, spirit and flesh, and explores how, in a world where sin and righteousness are many shades of gray, reality itself is (re)constructed through orthodoxy, belief, and fear. / Master of Fine Arts

This manuscript is written from the perspective of thirteen-year-old Adrian Matthiessen, who arrives in mid-2008 in Bethlehem, South Africa at a clinic in the township of Bohlokong where his mother is volunteering. Adrian is witness to an act of magic surrounding an orphan girl who arrives at the clinic; an event that many use to label her as a pariah. Deeply troubled by this, Adrian begins to investigate who this strange girl is by seeking out the stories of the Basotho, and by befriending a volunteer medical student from France, the grandson of the clinic's founder, and a South African girl he grows attracted to. This investigation reveals the troubled history of the founder who fought in Angola, a history that has now brought danger upon the clinic and its residents. Adrian also discovers that this investigation becomes a part of his own process of grieving over a recent family tragedy. The Theory of Light draws much of its material from the rich history of the region, as well as from the traditional myths and practices of the Basotho people. In many ways the manuscript bridges two worlds: one that is struggling to cope with globalization, and one that strives to retain cultural and historical traditions. This bridge places Adrian in a limbo of trying to understand magic, historical conflict, personal loss, first-love, and what it is like to be an outsider in South Africa. / Master of Fine Arts

No description available.