Date of Award:

5-2024

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Arts (MA)

Department:

English

Committee Chair(s)

Charles Waugh

Committee

Charles Waugh

Committee

Amber Caron

Committee

Nathan Straight

Abstract

I first conceived of the idea for this short story collection in my early 20's while working as a ski lift operator, bartender, construction worker, and window cleaner in Park City, Utah. At the same time, I was becoming interested in short fiction through the works of authors like Raymond Carver, Chuck Palahniuk, and Charles Bukowski, whose dirty realism has played a large role in the formulation of my thesis. I intend to write a story collection that moves their genre into a more modern setting. While this collection will not fit perfectly into the dirty realist box, the themes and characters are inspired by the dirty realists' mold, as well as depictions of the interaction of character and place across multiple literary genres.

I began to think about this collection more concretely while taking an undergraduate fiction workshop with Dr. Charles Waugh where I wrote an initial draft of the first story of the collection. It was also in this class, as well as an introductory fiction workshop taught by A.J. Ortega, that I began to understand short fiction as a genre. The short story form has been interesting to me ever since. I enjoy the challenge of creating plots and crafting characters that develop and hopefully change over the course of a few thousand words.

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