Congratulations to the Senior Honors Creative Nonfiction Thesis students graduating this semester! The honors creative nonfiction course, taught by Prof. Stephanie Elizondo Griest, is a double-semester course that culminates in the production of a 75-page (minimum) work of creative nonfiction, such as memoirs, personal essays, travel writing, food writing, literary journalism, or lyric essays. This is the third class of students to graduate from this course, and this year, there are nine students in the graduating class.
The class will be reading from their works on Wednesday and Thursday, April 19-20 from 6:30 to 7:30 pm in Graham Memorial Lounge. The event is open to the community.
Read about each student and their work below:
Alexis Dumain is a senior graduating in Psychology and English and Comparative Literature. Her thesis is a narrative of reclaiming the animal self.
Molly Herring is a senior graduating in Biology and Global Studies. Her thesis is a collection of travel essays exploring mythology, history, religion, science, culture, and many of the different manifestations of the feminine that she has encountered around the world.
Ruth Jeffers is a senior graduating in English and Comparative Literature. Her thesis is a travel narrative about her bodily experience of Palestine’s people, land, and history as an ex-Christian looking for God in the water, mountains, moon, and living beings.
Mia Lerner is a senior graduating in Creative Writing and Advertising/Public Relations. Her thesis is a poetic exploration of family and womanhood, and the way they interact.
SamLevi Middleton-Sizemore is a senior graduating in English and Comparative Literature and Studio Art. Their thesis is an intergenerational story about coming of age, gender, disability, and death in the American South.
Emma Nelson is a senior graduating in English and Comparative Literature. Her thesis explores what it means to be an addict by examining the grey areas of addiction and its treatment that often get overlooked in today’s extremist society.
Maia Sheets is creating a graphic memoir about family, legacy, and memory in Guam, Japan, and the United States.
Cecelia Tucker is a senior graduating in Psychology. Her thesis utilizes touchstones of sexuality, pollution, and fantasy to illustrate the experience of living a double life in adolescence: the tension between who we want to be and who we are.
Teresa Ruiz Vazquez is a senior graduating in English and Comparative Literature and Political Science. Her thesis is a narrative about family, the roles that come with being Mexican-American and the daughter of immigrants, and the aftermath of witnessing the deportation of one of her uncles when she was 16.