This thesis is titled after a piece by Rene Magritte. The piece is explained in the title story, but so as not to send you searching: Magritte took a plaster copy of Napoleon's death mask and painted a sky over it. He hung ...

This is a novella concerning modern disillusionment, gender roles, and interpersonal relationships. Leon, Cheryl, and Alex are a family that lives outside of a small Indiana town, near a small stand of trees. Leon is working ...

These seven short stories explore, through narrative, themes of connection and disconnection, of association and isolation, of love and abandonment, and of the unsinkable human desire to return oneself to an unattainable ...

This thesis consists of a fictional novella generally responding to the traditional conventions of the gothic novel. The story is about Gertrude Means, a recent widow who, upon learning that she is about to lose her house, ...

The stories collected here have been selected from those completed during my time in the MFA program at Colorado State University. In both assembling these works and ordering them, I tried to highlight moments of growth, ...

The Residents is a collage horror novel that follows Robbie, a wilderness ranger in Aspen, as she is mourns the death of her partner, Evie, and is haunted by her in their previously-shared home. Robbie's perspective on ...

"The Octopus Tree" was a story idea I started thinking about when I was teenager. I didn't feel like my writing ability and own mental health was in a positive enough state to write it until I pursued this MFA. "The Octopus ...

These stories are a collection of interpretations of the neurotic individual's ability to function within an increasingly structured and permanent society. No longer facing life and death struggles for survival, man's ...

The five short stories contained herein are the result of an obsession of mine that came about during my first semester at Colorado State University. It is an obsession about a small town in West Texas that does not exist ...

At its core, this thesis is an exploration of power. Because all literary characters must have the capacity to illuminate the basic human need to transform, I've aimed to give each of environments in which they can, through ...