Parker, Michael

uncg

There are 35 item/s.

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
Children in the storm 2007 1967 "In these six stories, I explore my belief that each of us, old or young, is constantly changing so much so that within a few years, we are hardly a reflection of our old selves. As children, we grow up under the shadow of an adult world. We are give...
Village of Petrified Men 2007 2534 "These stories often concern themselves with men chasing down a flawed sort of manhood. In these characters' minds, masculinity is a romantic mix of failure and drink, of chasing the wrong women and brooding in the face of calamity. These people like...
Plastic heart neighborhood 2007 745 "This thesis includes the body of my work produced while in the MFA program. I have chosen to submit six short stories that have been extensively revised with peers and advisors. It is the work I consider to be the best possible representative of my ...
The bare minimum 2011 5096 This thesis is a collection of short stories....
No new snow to cover the snow: two stories 2012 690 This thesis is comprised of two pieces of fiction. Each takes place in the fictional Hinge County, North Carolina. The first story, "Winter, Keep Us Warm," deals with the themes of fear and desire, and how they intertwine with one another. The second...
A film of flesh envelops us 2013 808 This collection includes three stories (and an excerpt from a novel) that inhabit the space between the realistic and the fantastic. The characters in these stories are afflicted with those peculiarly human illnesses: boredom, grief, madness, and sol...
Underway 2013 185 The four stories in this manuscript explore the complexities of relationships and family dynamics. The first story, "When Not Moored, at Anchor, or Aground," follows a girl who must deal with the knowledge of having witnessed an act that threatens he...
Habits of solitude 2013 396 Four works of original short fiction: "Bleeding Room," about a love affair between two workers in a Texas slaughterhouse; "The Pregnant Whale," about a man who investigates the life of the father he never knew; "Anthony Grant the Only," in which a fa...
Touch me where I'm rusting 2014 310 This excerpt from the novel Touch Me Where I'm Rusting explores Penelope Moore's immersion into an ugly, violent and at times profoundly beautiful remote Australian community of orchard workers. In the wake of a failing relationship, Penelope moves f...
Past possible paths 2015 269 Grazed: A shy expatriate woman in Paris desires connection, but finds that when she reaches out for it, it’s not what she expected. Ailments: A recent college grad takes up work with an aging man who is trying to sell off his ...
Joy 2019 44 This thesis is a draft of a short story cycle. It is comprised of stories inspired by many individuals with whom I lived at the Denver Catholic Worker, a house of hospitality for people experiencing homelessness, from 2012 to 2016....
Muscadine wine 2019 37 This thesis is comprised of four short stories. “Stones” and “Muscadine Wine” reimagine North Carolina folktales which (like most folklore) engage with our baser bodily fears; these retellings aim to centralize the female sexualities which are framed...
Bookeater and other love stories 2006 2886 The characters who inhabit Bookeater and Other Love Stories have little in common with each other. Their stories are not interconnected. However, they do share an almost overwhelming desire to connect, to unite with someone--or something--in order to...
Animal cruelty 2010 1431 The purpose of this thesis is to explore the widely differing circumstances under which misanthropy flourishes. A short story collection, this thesis follows characters from various walks of life. Protagonists include a high school student, an accoun...
Outlanders. 2010 996 The stories in Outlanders involve characters who live their lives on the outside of things—relationships, reality, social norms—even as they simultaneously desire and resist becoming part of the “inside.”...
Somewheres Else 2010 907 This thesis is a lot about fathers and sons – in Philadelphia mostly, but sometimes on the Pacific....
Flowers for America, stories 2014 1174 These stories are part of a cycle of stories that shares a central character whose life has been ravaged by war....
River runners 2019 488 This collection of stories attempts to explore obsessions with sport and how those obsessions change the lives of the characters involved....
Blood sports 2019 41 This thesis, composed of five short stories, contends with life in rural Virginia, with the unbreakable bond that forms between the land and its inhabitants. These characters often wish to leave, to manufacture a different reality than the one they h...
Quiet work: stories 2009 2525 Quiet Work is a collection of short stories unified by the way in which characters experience the tectonics of emotion: The hidden turbulence below the surface, the silent collisions of want and need which bring an individual to the point of transfor...
Charity, Nevada 2009 1589 This novel excerpt presents the stories of three residents of the fictional town of Charity, Nevada....
Children at play 2016 748 The six stories in this collection represent the best of my work as a student of creative writing. They explore the transition from adolescence to adulthood, the attempt to navigate the emotional space between oneself and the outside world, and the n...
What you ask for, what you want 2017 141 This thesis consists of eight short stories submitted as part of the requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree, the beginnings of a collection that aims to engage what writer Clare Beams calls “the living strangeness” of sensory experience, ide...
Christ haunted 2017 166 The following thesis is a collection of five short stories entitled Christ Haunted. The title is in reference to Flannery O’Connor’s remark that “while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” The stories, to varying...
Ray and other stories 2017 436 This thesis is a collection of six short stories centered around the friendship of two characters, Ray and Thomas. The narrator, Thomas, is the chronicler of the stories, which tell of their friendship from a young age to when they are adults. The fi...
The sexton 2017 105 The following thesis is an excerpt from a novel in progress submitted as partial requirement for The Master’s in Fine Arts degree at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. When a flooded river washes away ten graves in a county cemetery in c...
Their bodies and other stories 2018 65 This thesis is a collection of short stories that explore isolation and uncomfortable relationships. These stories span from a young woman coping with how the world perceives her body and how that relates to her mother's expectations, to a man's sens...
Let them lie: stories 2018 89 Through different voices and points-of-view, these five interlinked short stories explore the opiate epidemic in southwestern Ohio and the long-reaching effects of addiction, poverty, and systematic persecution. The characters struggle to find meanin...
The other part and other stories 2011 4770 For the most part, these fictional short stories are about romantic relationships....
Big island: stories 2012 1552 The stories in this collection take place on the island of Hawaii, also known as the Big Island. As inhabitants of a place widely considered as a paradise, the characters in these stories are unable to see their home as a paradise, and are forced fin...
Trying to reach a hundred with you 2015 611 This thesis consists of the first three chapters of a novel, the working title of which is Trying to Reach a Hundred with You. It is the story of Larry Zachary Brian, twenty-three, a community college dropout, resident of Portland, Oregon, whose only...
Mean when hungry and other stories 2015 195 Here there are mining strikes, bootleggers, lovers of Colonial times, and formidable dogs in short story form, told through a variety of different narrative structures....
But it's not 2015 248 This thesis contains a collection of four short stories written while in residence at the Master's in Fine Arts program at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro....
Another coast 2016 165 The five stories in this collection examine spaces and boundaries, both physical and not, that shape our shifting dynamics of power, memory, and loss at key moments. Presented in a range of points of view, the stories move from the West Coast of the ...
Out of water: stories 2018 109 These stories explore various human experiences—heartbreak, loss, grief, love, fear. While some are concretely rooted in reality, others play with surrealism, allegory, and the supernatural....