Interpersonal relations -- Fiction

Overview "A Starving Fire tells the story of a young man plagued by death, guilt, and regret, all while he tries to navigate this new world of ever-changing relationships after a terrible house fire claimed the lives of his father and little brother. This excerpt features the first part of his story, when he is still in his early twenties and struggling to move forward. Influenced by contemporary romance novels, Jaxson’s story navigates love in its many forms, including love for family, friends,...

Overview "This project seeks to explore the multivalent nature of experience and memory, following a young woman (Elizabeth) home after the death of her strange and distant friend (Ursa). Through a tangled web of lived and learned experience, flash-backs, dreamscapes, and mis- remembrances, Elizabeth must seek out the gods responsible for the gradual disintegration of her family and friendships, and reassign order to the place and meaning of her childhood––trying not to lose who she believes herself...

Overview "American Standard Time is a novel that follows three individuals as they begin to fall apart in time. Joe Cleaveland, a disillusioned heir to a pet food fortune, confronts his friend, Keremcan Köroğlu, a misanthrope MIT neuroscientist, about his worsening symptoms, before setting off in search of comfort in the form of his preternaturally determined girlfriend, Ingrid Bell. Over the course of the day, on his own search for answers, Köroğlu alights on a mysterious force at work beneath his...

Overview

"This stories [sic] explores the conflicts that exist in every relationship; whether platonic, familial, or romantic, diving into situations that force the protagonists to grapple with issues that they believed irrelivant to their situations. Through these experiences, the characters develop an ever-growing perspective of the complexities of the world they live in and come to a resolution within themselves that enables them to handle similar conflicts in the future." -- Abstract

Overview "What our minds label as "foreign," we tend to regard as exotic, threatening, or irrelevant. Our instinct is to neatly compartmentalize and hold at arm's length that which we have separated from ourselves. But what happens when the division between the foreign and familiar becomes ambiguous? Painful are the times in life when we discover the defection of the familiar to the foreign. A relationship with someone we love, an aspect of our own identity: it is disorienting, jarring, and unnerving...

Overview "Along with a deep investigation of the human condition, this is a story that dissects, tests, and questions the foundations, fundamentals, and the fruition of a few lived-in experiences, and of the various full-circle warm-belly miraculous feeling of life happening. Ultimately, it all gets compared to one object—a Golden Delicious apple, whose symbolism, history, and lore (Biblical or otherwise) makes for a metaphor that both incites and soothes humanity's inclines and descents. The action...

Overview

"No Future is a collection of linked short stories set in a near future in Bakersfield, California, chronicling the lives of Raphael "Raffi" Veras and Louis Palko. Each story is voice-driven and unified by the idea that spectacular ambitions and technological advancements are always marred by an escape from messier, more fundamental human conflicts." -- Abstract

Overview "In this collection of short stories, a nearly-blind grandfather drives around town guided by his grandchild; a woman struggles to communicate with her demented elderly mother while trying to keep her marriage from falling apart; a teenager who blames himself for his mother's death searches for the perfect funeral flowers; a Puerto Rican woman living in Boston recalls her childhood on the island while awaiting surgery; a man literally meets God; another finds his calling as a sperm donor...

Overview "High school graduation is fast approaching for senior Marjorie "Jorie" Jorie Haywood, and she's overwhelmed by everything: AP exams, prom committees, musical rehearsals, and her part-time job. food service shifts. Most importantly of all of this are the college applications. Jorie is sethas her heart set on attending the University of Florida, —in her mind, it's a given and always has been—so when UF waitlists her, she spirals, desperately searches desperately searching for a way to impress...

Overview "This collection of short stories and flash are the best I've written during my graduate education at Emerson College. These stories follow a style distinctly my own, examining the human condition of individuals in their 20s. The men and women represented in these stories are adrift, not successful or happy, and are living inconsolable lives: a man starts digging to China to find his estranged wife, a young woman tries to find solace by accosting her favorite musician, a filmmaker attributes...

Overview "Bowie Robbins doesn't know much. But what she does know is designing clothes, her twin sister, Presley, her melodramatic mom and her boyfriend, Owen. That is, until Owen is caught cheating on her in front of the whole school. Reeling from the breakup, Bowie suddenly finds herself with lots of free time just as the theater workshop finds themselves without a costume mistress. With a nudge from her sister, Bowie takes on the role and discovers that she's capable of a lot more than she ever...

Overview "The night of her father’s funeral, Josie Parker finds her father's old journal, gets drunk on the floor of what used to be his painting studio, and books a trip to France. On her first night, she meets the British expat who’s as gorgeous as he is mysterious. After thinking he gave her a disconnected number, they meet by chance in a café and begin their doomed flirtation. Josie climbs up to the monastery in the mountains and tries to call her mom, only to end up experiencing her first real...

Overview "When Isaac Goff realizes the future expected of him by his family is not what he wants, he decides to apply to undergraduate school in Hawaii in order to leave the small, southern town of Redwater. He keeps the application secret, afraid to confront his strict parents and finally end the failing-relationship to his longterm boyfriend, Tom. Isaac works diligently to be accepted by the university until the police become involved in the sudden disappearnace [sic] of Tom. Sure that Tom is all...

Overview "This thesis comprises the prologue and first eight chapters of my novel in-progress, We Lie With Monsters. A work of fiction, the thesis blends elements of the paranormal with horror, and focuses on Wren, a young twenty-something who is at a crossroads in their life and comes home after a long period of time away. Once home, they must deal with the death of their estranged mother and all the emotional baggage that begets, as well as the fallout of running away from their past and leaving...