MFA Program for Poets & Writers Masters Theses Collection

The Book of Hats

Zeller, Dov S. — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:56:45 PST

The Book of Hats" is a novel of adult literary fiction that comes in six hat-inspired sections. The novel opens late on a Saturday night when the phone rings and Ida Velikowsky, seventy-year-old wannabe tough guy who, in actuality, is a bit of a marshmallow, is woken out of a dream of hats. She runs into the living room and picks up the phone and hears on the other end of it the unwelcome voice of her no-goodnik brother Benny. She hasn't talked to him in forty years.

Ida is someone who likes to keep her world small. She plays her cards close to her chest and faces each day as if it were an obstacle course in which memory and intimacy are the things that must be avoided at all costs. She is most comfortable when reading the “National Geographic” and avoiding friends. For nearly six years, since the death of her lover Gertie, she’s managed to stay in a fairly comfortable state of emotional shut-down. Then Benny calls and she finds herself vulnerable to memory, hope and rage, and even more painful, regret.

She doesn't want to see Benny. She knows it's not a good idea to see him. But she finds herself wondering if, by seeing him, something in her life could be restored. The novel opens with Benny's call and moves, comic and menacing, toward a possible reunion.

Falling Rock

Varnadore, Heather S. — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:53:34 PST

This project is an episodic novel that revolves around the misadventures and exploits of Povi McDougal, head diversity consultant for G & K. She is responsible for the aggressive sensitivity training of new hires in the company’s bid to avoid future lawsuits. She is a nervy, disenfranchised, high-functioning alcoholic. When you think Povi,think binaries: she’s a bighearted misanthrope. She is furious yet wistful, knowing yet obtuse, and so forth. The episodes are all narrated by Povi and are very voice-driven. As a series of connected stories, the action is not in service to one primary plotline. There is, however, a narrative arc that follows Povi’s efforts to come to grips with her personal and ethnic identity, her troubled past and her self-imposed isolation. Central to these stories is a synthetic folklore. As a child, Povi’s father enrolled her in the Indian Princesses youth group at the YMCA in a misguided attempt to help her connect more fully with her Native American heritage. Figuring prominently in the girls’ mythology was the tale of Falling Rock, the highly sought after Indian princess who wanders into the woods to escape the fray of young braves who seek her hand in marriage. “Legend has it that Falling Rock becomes lost and is never heard from again. The group’s participants are told to be on the lookout for her whenever they see a yellow road sign bearing her name. In short, Povi is my Princess Falling Rock. Given her sense of disinheritance, it seems fitting that her folklore is synthetic, invented. Basically, I’ve gotten her to wander off into the woods for a bit of solitude, and I’ve kept her there for a while, as she tries to find her way back to her tribe – or some such suitable substitute for tribal affiliation, community, love, what have you.

In the Colonies

Sansone, Nicolas A. — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:52:21 PST

In the Colonies is a work of fiction. It tells the story of a young German harpist, C––, who is seduced into a life of luxury by a venal American, Sansone. She is invited to spend a year at his artists’ colony, where she works on composing a transcendent work of music and, in the process, realizes that she has lost sight of the material realities around her. Ultimately, she comes to realize that her single-minded pursuit of an ideal Beauty has driven her away from the very ideals she aspired to in the first place.

Rules for an Old Children's Game: After the Paintings of Egon Schiele

Mar, Jenny — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:24:36 PST

Part memoir, history and forgery, this novel chronicles a child’s love affair with the violent expressionist paintings of Egon Schiele. The novel is written in switchback time and takes place in the 1960’s and the early twentieth century (1910-1915). An unnamed narrator and his Viennese circle of friends are trying to restore the history of the great painter when a mysterious man turns up at the door. Wilhelm Boehme claims to know more about Schiele than any history book. But what Boehme describes is not just a coming of age story but the unsettling process of history rewriting itself, tucking into its folds, parts of the narrative that are too disturbing for a culture. In this novel are real events mixed with fantasies; personal chronicles from real historians and institutional figures (Alessandra Comini, Werner Hoffman)—and fictionalized characters taken from paintings that still hang in our galleries.

Occasionally Disparate Stories

MacDonald, Ryan A. — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:24:34 PST

This Thesis consists of mostly single page stories.

In Between Days

Lawlor, Andrea — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:24:11 PST

IN BETWEEN DAYS is a novel about a young queer shapeshifter coming of age in the 1990s.

A Daytime Moon

Kleeman, Anne — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:23:59 PST

A novel submitted to fulfill the requirements of the M.F.A. degree. Subjects include the war in Afghanistan & memory.

The Human Error

Doan, Ngoc — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 07:10:25 PST

A collection of poems about the folly of human nature and also its triumph. These poems, while chronicling the terrible living that is filled with pleasure, loss and bewilderment, attempt at understanding what is love, the desire to look towards what/who is to come, and the yearning to be outside oneself. The human error is to love.

Solid Gold October

Ward, Christopher S. — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 06:19:40 PDT

ABSTRACT

SOLID GOLD OCTOBER

MAY 2012

CHRISTOPHER S. WARD, B.F.A., MASON GROSS SCHOOL OF THE ARTS, RUTGERS UNIVERISTY, NEW BRUNSWICK

M.F.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Dara Wier

This thesis is a collection of poems.

Sometimes the Air in the Room Goes Missing

Green, Dana — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 05:59:37 PDT

A collection of short stories