An anthology of creative nonfiction essays, this collection studies the inner workings of the author at her most vulnerable: whether as a child unaware of her parents’ crumbling marriage or as an adolescent struggling ...

cumulatively display a broad approach to experimentation as they range in style from realism to postmodern absurd farce, magical realism to historical reimagination, and from romance to coming-out narratives. This collection examines territories that are both...

Comprised of a collection of short stories and a full-length screenplay, this thesis is a demonstration of the author's progress as a writer. The stories are literary realism set in St. Louis, Missouri, particularly ...

Navigation Errors is a collection of personal essays that explore the ideas of religious fundamentalism, humanity’s place in—and relation to—nature, physical and mental challenge, paradigm shifts, and the mistakes that ...

Prairie Madness is a collection of fiction and non-fiction that examines the impact and power of loneliness, both lifelong and momentary. In some of this work, loneliness fuels acts of courage; in others it triggers denial ...

Grief and grieving hovers around this essay collection, both the author's grief over losing her mother and also what that loss meant to the other people in her life. An essay about the tragic death of the author's uncle- ...

This collection of short stories examines the different lives of people as they navigate the strange and confusing nature of their daily lives. There is a particular focus on how the monotonous can be equally as bizarre ...

The stories in this collection focus on utilizing formal experimentation in order to illuminate the struggles of characters. For example, the title story focuses a couple that enters a photo booth and leaves with a doomed ...

The following project is the product of three years of intensive research and trial and error. You’ll notice it’s divided into two sections: fiction and nonfiction. However, one of the research questions central to this ...

The novel interrogated what it means to live in a midwestern college town while not being in college. What it means to have stayed in one place long enough that everyone who left has decided to come back. What it means ...

This collection of stories explores gaps in human communication, the unknowability of others, and the anxiety that manifests from social experience. Many of the longer pieces are rooted in the Lake of the Ozarks, a 92-mile ...

Monsters external and internal stalk the margins of the stories and novella that make up this collection. Though each selection engages in its own distinct exploration of the monstrous, the pieces hint at a shared question: ...

Family Traditions tells the story of young adults who have grown up as Wiccans. Because Wicca remains a new and small religion, the vast majority of its followers converted from Christianity or other faiths, and the number ...

This multi-genre collection—including fiction, flash fiction, and a play—explores the roots of connection implied in familial relationships and structures. These works question—sometimes stepping into the supernatural ...

Magical Realism, religion, illness and death are twisted through this collection of short stories to explore how people deal with the fantasy of belief in a very real world. The non-fiction essay "How an Illness I Don't ...

This collection of stories portrays a variety of lives dealing the aftereffects of loss. In “Robert the Lionheart” a boy seeks the DNA of his parents to recreate them and struggles with what that might mean. In “Weeds” ...

This collection of linked short stories explores the storytelling traditions of a family that continues to deal with the results of a past trauma in their day-to-day lives. The three members of the Taile family struggle ...

This collection of short fiction and creative nonfiction explores how we navigate our most intimate and challenging personal relationships, how we use art and writing to try to understand and articulate the most ineffable ...

This thesis is a collection of short stories that were written and re-written between my time as an undergraduate at Columbia College and my time as a Graduate Student at UMKC. These stories were picked out from many ...

This thesis is a collection of short stories that were written and re-written between my time as an undergraduate at Columbia College and my time as a Graduate Student at UMKC. These stories were picked out from many ...