MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/27320

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The Last Of Our Days
(2024-02-12) Shebl, Marwah Maher; Chen, Ching-In
This is an exploration of character and the depth of trauma. Sectioned into three parts to help guide the reader along, this book works to mess with the reader's expectations and perhaps toy with their heartstrings. It is a science fiction exploration influenced by both personal experiences and dream-inspired artifacts. Much of this work was created through conventional means such as a character generator and the building of sculpted aliens.
The Myth of Intellectuality and Development: Exploiting the Feebleminded Subject in Discourses of American Philanthropy
(2023-08-14) Thibault, Ronnie; Gardner, Benjamin R.
This dissertation is a polyvocal archive that approaches developmental and intellectual disability as a category of historical analysis, with a central focus on comparing how U.S. charity and philanthropy discourses have drawn upon, reinforced, or contested configurations of intellectuality and development. This dissertation is a political and intellectual project that seeks to explain the material ways in which the cultural discourses that conjured what I contextualize as the ‘exemplary feebleminded subject’ have influenced historical and current-day geopolitical practices. Newspaper stories at the onset of the twentieth century normalized the exemplary feebleminded subject while magazines, print advertising, books, science journals, and motion pictures popularized the idea that the so-called feebleminded class was both a burden and a threat to national and global progress. Institutions linked the feebleminded, idiot, imbecile, and moron classifications to physical, mental, developmental, and intellectual disabilities, and the exemplary feebleminded subject was endlessly adapted in discourses of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation.
The Panther
(2023-08-14) Eldridge, Amy; Milutis, Joe
The Panther is a work of short fiction set in the Florida Everglades that explores the tale of a family-run hotel and casino capitalizing off a tragedy that occurred within the establishment years prior by transforming it into a spectacle for the sake of entertainment. Serving as a demonstration of how the lines can easily become blurred between the real and simulation, the work also embeds research surrounding the history of Florida into the text. This thesis contains the fictional work and an accompanying poetics statement regarding the composition of the work and the research that went into its creation.
Mist Manifesto & The Burlesque Genre: Ephemorality in a World Full of Pinochet Plushies
(2023-08-14) Levi-D'Ancona, Alysa; Milutis, Joe; Chen, Ching-In
Set in a post-apocalyptic marsh where a strange, bright mist consumes the town of Ahpisaw and stops time, Mogyype, a grieving widower, struggles to keep a hold on reality when he sees his dead wife in the blinding mist. The narration is split between Mogyype and anonymous manifesto chapters, which detail desperation and malicious intent in destroying the world of the Now Times. As we learn more about the world, the Fall, the gods, and the mist’s origin, we worry about the fate of Mogyype and what really is lurking in the marshes. This story is characterized by a subgenre of postmodernism coined as burlesque, a descendent of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque works. As such, the burlesque genre depends upon a performer or a trickster that functions as an agent of chaos and an agent of change. The characters are stuck in cycles of grief; they would rather create chaos than accept that they must move on. Instead, their actions are fueled by desperation and anger at a world that they feel has failed them and gods that have abandoned them.
Transmissions from the Mermaid Palace
(2023-08-14) Duncan, Atlanta; Borsuk, Amaranth
Employing elements of autofiction, place-based field recordings, and local lore and legend from historical archives, Transmissions from the Mermaid Palace seeks a bridge out of the graveyard left by the opioid crisis, a rash of suicides, and the Lyme Epedemic that has blighted a small fishing community in Southern Rhode Island. Through stories of intergenerational myth and memory, the narrators make their way through gritty drug-dens, dilapidated row houses, cemeteries, and the secret locations of folklore, seeking some sort of fix. The ruins of colonial violence poke out from under a Dunkin Donuts, an abandoned, burned down, flooded and drug-addled suburban punk landscape like a Derek Jarman film. Rhode Island music legends such as the Cowsills, Tanya Donelly, and Wendy Carlos wander into the frame at times, reflecting on how the sounds of a place produce the music made there. Spliced in are reports from a mysterious “agent” in latex bondage gear, conducting field recordings of white noise at coastal locations of historical and banal import, places locals go to get high or hook up out of sight. Her mission is ambiguous but she seems to have been hired by her younger selves, attempting contact with the rapidly climbing number of untimely dead, seeking a solution to the crisis, ultimately, to save her own life.
Beyond the Curtain
(2023-08-14) Woo, Raelynne; Borsuk, Amaranth
Beyond the Curtain is a work of hybrid autofiction that explores the facets of performance through dance in the studio and stage, as well as in everyday life. The speaker in the work navigates how her identity is shaped by not only how she sees herself, but also by the perceptions of others. There is often pressure for more reserved and quiet people to “fill the space” and the idea that this identity both places them in a box as and is one to break free from (finding one’s voice and confidence). Identity within this work has been inspired by my own life by incorporating different writing forms and visual texts to construct memories from my childhood experiences as a dancer and student. Through this process, Beyond the Curtain explores what it means to be seen and unseen, brave and fearful, heard and silenced, and how these characteristics make coming of age a continuous process of discovery and opportunity.
Veiled Street
(2023-08-14) Erdenebaatar, Bujinlkham; Heuving, Jeanne Heuving JH; Milutis, Joe JM
"Veiled Street" is a heartfelt exploration of the creative process, delving into the artist's struggle and the connection between personal experiences, subconscious explorations, and artistic creation. The novella follows the journey of Erkhes, a young poet attempting to complete her first novel while grappling with her personal antagonist, "Great Words." As the story unfolds, Erkhes receives a mysterious letter from an artist named Arian, who extends an invitation to the enigmatic "Veiled Street," shedding light on Erkhes' battle with "Great Words." Erkhes decides to meet with Arian, driven by an unwavering determination to finish her novel. The story then follows Arian and Erkhes' intertwined fates and delves into Arian's transformation of her past experiences into her artistic persona.
Studio 9
(2023-08-14) Gaines, Madison; Dunn, Steven
Blackness is not a performance, and yet a performance has been demanded. In Studio 9, Hazey has been corrupted by faux intimacy and the burden of observation as the talk show host of a national TV show. The various performances on and off the stage have severed her from the Black community and left her susceptible to manipulation. The challenge becomes confronting the horrific truths of her actions, and the result—of community, of companionship, of true vulnerability—can be the alteration of values once believed to be unwavering.
Anti-Parietal Epithalamus
(2023-08-14) Whitehurst, Matthew Livezey; Borsuk, Amaranth
Anti-Parietal Epithalamus is a hybrid work of speculative fiction and visual art, a non-linear story that follows characters into a dystopic alternative future of 4023. In response to a time-space anomaly that has rendered a massive geographical desert simultaneously present and absent, Johniffer and Jimison are drafted by a highly bureaucratic organization, The World Octagonals, to uncover the inner workings of the Entangled Desert. Johniffer’s sister, Annalese is a religious acolyte for her god Antropy, lives peacefully at the Vestigial Parish but through a series of visions becomes unable to separate Antropy from the anomalies caused by the Pineal Caelum. The Pineal Caelum is a mysterious entity that for an unknown reason is desperately attempting to get the attention of humans by manipulating vibrations and time-space. This thesis plays with magical interpretations of quantum mechanics, non-human intelligence, absurdity, humanity, and the boundaries of consciousness. At the center of it is a brooding anxiety over the unforeseeable effects of technological integrations and ecological disasters.
The Carolyne Project: A Speculative Experiment of Narrative Structure
(2023-08-14) James, Connor; Chen, Ching-In
The Carolyne Project is an in-progress exploration of different narrative structural shapes, moving away from the most common form in English literature: the wave or rollercoaster. Set in a post-climate cyberpunk landscape, the narrative uses a MÃ¶bius-fractal pattern to explore concepts of what it is to be human, both literally and metaphysically, through the lens of an undying character, Carolyne, while criticizing destructive capitalist structures and ideologies. To do so, the MÃ¶bius-fractal is the movement across the chronology of Carolyne’s life. Chapters alternate between the “left” strip moving forward, the “right” strip moving backward, and repeatedly overlapping at a single point key to the character’s formation. Using short chapters to leap across time to follow different key moments and deaths in Carolyne’s life, this creates an erratic narrative pulled together by cohesive but episodic chapters.
It’s Still You
(2022-07-14) Nikfard, Madison; Borsuk, Amaranth; Chen, Ching-In
This thesis is a metafictional collection of art and words created by the author between the ages of twelve to eighteen, and edited as a novel documenting roughly seven year’s worth of self-reflection and growth. Diary pages, writing journals, and miscellaneous doodles are woven together to tell the coming-of-age story of a young girl trying to record and understand her passions, relationships, and dreams. In this reworking of true events, Madison writes about major changes in her life, starting with entering a new school, and ending shortly after her graduation from the same institution six years later. Her story shares direct insights into her mental health and true ambitions for writing and art as she faces intense social and familial pressures to change almost every aspect of herself for the sake of fitting in or finding success.
Sabotage of the Sunflowers
(2022-07-14) Fuentes, Tricia Goetschius; Milutis, Joe
Sabotage of the Sunflowers is a creative collection of writings inspired by my family’s immigration from Cuba to the United States. These stories come from memories, retellings, interviews, and my own imagination. They include some facts, some embellishments, and some fiction. The stories are told in various forms: prose, poetry, first-person narrative, and reworked transcripts taken from many hours of family interviews. These transcripts-turned-narratives remain fairly close to their original form and make up the majority of this thesis.
PLEASE: A Chapbook and Video
(2022-07-14) Lee, Harrison; Milutis, Joe; Hiebert, Ted
PLEASE is a poetry chapbook and video which make use of rhythm, rhyme, and musicality to explore recurring themes and motifs in the life of the narrator; a modern twenty-four-year-old in the midst of a quarter-life crisis. The narrator finds himself fragmented between his struggles with mental health issues like OCD, substance abuse, self-doubt, and existential dread, while simultaneously finding moments in which he is able to affirm his self-worth. His propensity for avoidance and distraction is equally rivaled by an inescapable sense of clarity regarding his situation and mental state. The video accompaniment sees the author, Lee, performing each poem in various locations, with varying aesthetic choices.
Life Could Be What It Is Right Now
(2022-07-14) LeCompte, Meta Camille; Brown, Rebecca
Intimacy is at the center of my poetics. My thesis is the journey of my speaker leaning into the intimacy that art and writing provides in order to accept the gift of darkness. Although a lot of the content in my collection has an underlying tone of trauma and darkness, my speaker persists through their writing and through the beauty that their writing forges. My speaker takes the destruction caused from intimacy and turns it into something mystical, something that offers solace.
Suspension
(2022-07-14) Thomas, Carson; Hiebert, Ted
This collection explores the theme of “Suspension:” coming of age, dealing with tragedy, and searching for meaning in the post-pandemic world; a world that becomes increasingly demanding of personal sacrifice and the performance of pain on the part of the individual while simultaneously becoming increasingly incoherent. The primary themes of the collection are violence, embodiment, and time. They directly address the suicide and preservation of my older brother via life support and the grieving process. They also address the complex relationship between gender and violence, and loss of innocence. The word “suspension” references both the sadomasochistic ritual gesture of flesh hook suspension and the resulting shifts in time that the suspendee experiences. This multiple implication of time is also metaphor for my brother’s suspension in a coma (the stasis of waiting for the decision to cut off life support, the impossibility of trying to respond properly to grief under the conditions of the pandemic) and the time it takes for bodies to heal from physical injury both physically and emotionally.
Japanese Blood in the Heart of the Gothic: An Anthology of Gothic Stories from the Japanese Diaspora
(2022-07-14) Hirayama, Amy; Brown, Rebecca
Japanese Blood in the Heart of the Gothic is a fictional anthology of Gothic short stories from across the Japanese diaspora. Though the authors are fictional, they represent real Japanese communities outside of Japan and the real sense of otherness that comes from settling in a new homeland. The authors and their stories vary in historical time period, subject and style; but, the Gothic and its destabilizing uncanniness run through them all. This anthology is a layered cake of a project. It’s a collection of creepy stories. It’s an experiment in defining mixed-race Japanese American story-telling. It’s a statement on belonging. It’s a love letter to a community. This project is in its first stage. The second stage will include authors and stories from South America as well as repatriated authors who write as outsiders in Japan.
Beginners, or The First Voyage of Discovery
(2022-07-14) OBrien, Sky; Hiebert, Ted
Set in the swells of history, Beginners tells the story of Ellipsis, three dots with nothing to do. A visit from The Universe prompts Ellipsis to return to work on her island. She needs men–and God is sent to help. What follows is the parody of a grand project where the likes of Christopher Columbus, James Cook, and Ferdinand Magellan find themselves on the same ship, fighting for the command of their first voyage of discovery and the imagined promise of their myriad destinations. Meanwhile, the contestants on a TV show wait patiently for love . . .
What Blooms in the Dark
(2022-07-14) Mundy, Emily Jewel; Brown, Rebecca; Chen, Ching-In
This manuscript was born underground. Following an obsession with roots and soil, these poems appeared one by one—as if pushing up from single seeds, surrounded in dampness. This collection of poetry is one that dives into the personal shadow’s archive of past selves. It teems with spirits, both human and natural. It descends into the dark necessarily, as a precursive measure of arching back up for the light; it honors the violence and the beauty within both. Its purpose is to trace a journey of release, return, and rebirth; to witness the divine’s hand in each cycle of growth.
6-foot pine: life and romance in the chrondemic age
(2021-08-26) Watson, Cliff; Borsuk, Amaranth; Milutis, Joe
6-foot pine: life and romance in the chrondemic age is a hybrid work of speculative fiction that interrogates attraction and connection in a near-future time of chronic pandemics while under the persistent choking ravages of climate change. Zach, a dental receptionist, artist, and comic enthusiast, and Olivia, a get-it-done senior accountant, start a passionate office romance during the twelfth year of the latest pandemic, a time when their every movement and interaction is carefully circumscribed to prevent contagion inside, while their lives outside the office are shrouded in a near-constant smog. Despite these challenges, Zach and Olivia, guided by Captain Capsule, their comic-book muse, deepen their connection. Along the way, they navigate the constraints of office politics, corporate power, and technological intrusion, and face head-on their relationship to nature and personal monstrosity. As suggested by the title, 6-foot pine explores distance and boundaries, whether physical, familial, romantic, or cultural. Mirroring how Zach and Olivia’s relationship pushes against all confines, the story plays out across a diversity of forms including live theater, narrative prose, concrete poetry, and virtual reality to build an immersive and participatory world for the reader and audience.
Dutch Boats
(2021-08-26) O'Connor, Rose Kaitlin; Brown, Rebecca
It began with a painting, a painting of a boat with waves that rolled off the canvas and over my body and carried me backwards in time. I washed ashore on the riverbanks of a small town in 1840s Netherlands, where one painting became the story of a young Dutchman named Willem. As he prepares for a trip across the continent, Willem reflects on his relationship with his childhood sweetheart. These memories are brought on by his interactions with the world around him, a world alive with beauty and constant, inevitable change. A tale of hesitation and heartache, “Dutch Boats” explores how reflecting on our environments can inspire both joy and suffering and how our interactions, with ourselves and with others, are affected by these moments of quiet.

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