Award Date

May 2019

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Maile Chapman

Second Committee Member

Douglas Unger

Third Committee Member

Anne Stevens

Fourth Committee Member

Erika Abad

Fifth Committee Member

Steven Sexton

Number of Pages

82

Abstract

My thesis manuscript Forget Me Not & Other Stories is composed of several short stories and the first section of a novel. The first drafts of these stories were written during my first and second years in the program while my primary focus this semester has been the novel. I believe this thesis reflects my growth as both a writer and critical reader of fiction as a result of my time here. Much of the work included here began as assignments for a creative class, including an imitation of Marilyn Robinson’s’ Gilead written for Professor Doug Unger’s Forms of Fiction. The first ideas for the ending novel began in Dr. Maile Chapman’s course on crafting ambiguity in fiction. My work interrogates the intersections of my identity as a white, queer Cherokee citizen living in an imperialist state that continues to actively colonize sovereign indigenous nations and other disenfranchised communities of color. Over the last several semesters, my focus as a writer has shifted to explore the complex colonial hierarchies imposed on queerness and indigeneity using surreal and fantastical elements. In the opening story a white-passing Cherokee woman copes with her absent father’s return from the dead, and the main character in the novel excerpt faces the psychological and emotional effects of feeling uprooted and displaced through the metaphor of jumping through space and time. My goal is for this creative work to engage with difficult truths, particularly dialogues that surround conflicting intersectional identities and internalized racism and queerphobia within marginalized communities. The stories and excerpt contained here are all very much a work in-progress. Thank you for reading!

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Available for download on Friday, May 15, 2026


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