Publication Date
Summer 2020
Advisor(s) - Committee Chair
Jessica Folk (Director), Dale Rigby, and Dawn Hall
Degree Program
Department of English
Degree Type
Master of Fine Arts
Abstract
Initially inspired by classic female queer writers like Djuna Barnes and Carson McCullers and then later enamored with modern queer memoirists and journalists such as Michelle Tea and Ariel Levy, I decided to craft a collection of short stories centered on queerness. As a bisexual writer, it has often been clear to me how few and stereotypical depictions of bisexuality exist in literature and other art forms. My goal with this collection is to offer a raw, real compilation of stories that depicts a variety of bisexual characters with varied situations and motivations. At the same time, the collection is meant to be cohesive in its thematic focus on not only queerness, but also other themes such as death, duality of emotion, (mis)communication, music, etc. Altogether, the stories represent the ways in which I have internalized both classic and modern queer texts and attempted to blend them and create fresh material with a focus on the rawness of modern writers and the focus on language of more classic writers. Included here is an introduction as well as five short stories: “I Left My Toothbrush in San Francisco,” “Digital Fetus,” “All Out of Jet Fuel,” “She Thinks of Murderers,” and “Which Part is the Knife?”
Disciplines
Creative Writing | English Language and Literature | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Fine Arts
Recommended Citation
Hanks, Hailey, "Which Part Is the Knife?" (2020). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 3228.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/3228
Included in
Creative Writing Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Fine Arts Commons