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ORCID
https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5454-7056
Document Type
Campus Access
Degree Program
English
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
Year Degree Awarded
2023
Month Degree Awarded
May
Keywords
fiction, short stories, grief, loss, darkness, genre
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/34928337
Abstract
What are we without the darkness that lurks inside our hearts, our homes, our forests, our deep places where light does not touch? For some, the darkness is overwhelming, overt, obfuscating. For others, it remains a place of balance; there is no shadow without light, after all.
In the stories that follow, strange and eerie things rise from the darkness, but none so frightening as loss. What do we do when grief threatens to overwhelm us? Do we tear our way back into the world of the living with tooth and nail? Do we pray for a miracle? Do we take a life to preserve another? What power loss gives us, a vacuum to fill with fear or love or rage.
Dark at the Center is an invitation. It invites us, reader and author alike, to look inside at our own dimly-lit places, to stare into a dark mirror and not recoil from what we see. It invites us to search for gods in the rings of trees. It invites us to plumb the depths of oceans and look to the stars for answers. It invites us to laugh with demons and make friends with the ghosts of our pasts. It invites us to discover what we are capable of in times of crisis. How deep does the darkness go, and what long-forgotten things might we find in its expanse?