Keywords

Creative nonfiction

Abstract

We Are the Asteroid is a collection of personal essays concerned with the power of erasure and manipulation of chronology that comes with writing. It both acknowledges and participates in the fact that nonfiction writers become unstuck in time, whether they want to or not, traveling between ages, rearranging the order of events into the stories they tell. The collection centers on a few traumatic events in the narrator's life, and it explores the ways in which she deals with those events through her writing. The writer utilizes various structural techniques, such as the segmented form, to play with the idea that the placement of events in a story can affect the emotions attached to those memories. In this way, the writer looks at the power that writing has over illness, violent relationships, and even death. Exploring topics as wide-ranging as infertility, inauthentic grief, and sacrifice, the collection resolutely returns to the idea that the nonfiction writer is in control of, and therefore charged with, the responsibility of making beautiful even the saddest of memories. We Are the Asteroid serves both as a wish to go back and an acknowledgement that we must, despite our abilities and tools as a writer to dwell, continue moving forward.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2014

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Roney, Lisa

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

English

Degree Program

Creative Writing

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0005477

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0005477

Language

English

Release Date

December 2019

Length of Campus-only Access

5 years

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Arts and Humanities -- Dissertations, Academic; Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Humanities

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