This thesis is the first third of a coming of age novel called i. In this selection the central character, Bea Bouvier, prepares to see her estranged mother on a cruise ship to the Bahamas. She hopes her parents will decide to reunite as a family, though it becomes increasingly...
This thesis, a collection of short fiction, attempts to surface some of the discrepancy between inner and outer lives, between who these characters want to be and who they've become, between the lives they might have had and those they've chosen because the former are too chancy and the latter...
The purpose of this thesis was to create a sustained piece of fiction that both represented my growth as a writer throughout my time at Oregon State University, and wove together a mixture of imagination, language, and creativity. My hope was to write a novella that incorporated and drew from...
These essays are an attempt to rebuild memories that explore the nature of work and family. They explore how work knocks against the joints of the body and against the joints between family members, and, as time passes, how the next generation inherits the family line of work only to...
Kiddie Pool is a collection of eight short stories dealing in general terms with themes of culpability and control. The characters in the stories have their share of problems—car accidents, domestic violence, manic depression, obesity, unexpected deaths, truth or dare, religious crises—but they are resilient souls who keep on keeping...
Living by the Wayside and Other Stories explores the tension between control and dependence and how that tension affects the ability to sustain intimate relationships. These are stories about women who struggle for independence, but experience the cost of self-rule as isolation. Living by the Wayside and Other Stories focuses...
Modern Apostles actively attempts to blur the line between academic scholarship and narrative fiction for the purpose of satirizing the social and the political assumptions of its contemporary moment. By appropriating the loudest voices in dominant American culture, the inter-textual narratives (1) call attention to the voices that go unheard,...
In this collection of linked stories, four characters navigate space between selves they’ve been and those to come. Alice must invent an autonomous identity after her husband dies in a bike crash. As she casts about to populate a new life, a geographer, a violinist, and a clarinetist emerge at...
Northwest of Normal is the first part of a novel that takes place along an imaginary Oregon river called the Ipsyniho. The story grows from valley’s fertile loam like a blackberry vine, entangling a group of locals—fly fishing guides and midwives, artists and dope growers—just as a posse of wealthy...
The characters in each of these pieces exist outside the periphery of the so-called norm. In "Through Parted Curtains," "What They Do Besides Eat," and "Two Lambs," June wishes to enter the adult world that tends to exclude her (though she will only enter conditionally). June is, of course, about...