Abstract

The Long and Short of It is a collection of ten stories, spanning centuries and continents, illustrating the universality of loss. Here is a war-haunted Korean vet, brainwashed Nazi brides, a neurotic Soviet ballerina, and a re-imagined Ethan Frome. In these stories, anxiety waits in the wings: will Ethan's wife discover his affair? Will the brides acknowledge the dark truth behind their training? Will a mother recover her kidnapped baby? Characters grapple with grief and anxiety in various ways. Two mothers mourn missing babies: one turns to the occult, the other heads to Mars. Children reel with abandonment: one obsesses over ballet, the other strives to escape a raging wildfire. With recurring themes of family and motherhood, these stories explore the psychological effects of loss. Ranging from the mundane to the wildly magical, the characters in these stories are haunted by figurative and literal ghosts as they navigate both internal conflict and external responsibilities.

Graduation Date

2019

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Poissant, David

Degree

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

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

English

Degree Program

Creative Writing

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0007500

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0007500

Language

English

Release Date

5-15-2024

Length of Campus-only Access

5 years

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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Included in

Fiction Commons

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