POPPYSEEDS: ARTS & CRAFTS

Poppyseeds: Arts & Crafts is a collection of short stories which analyzes the relationship art as a concept has with human relations, specifically familial and romantic bonds, and how art can both positively and negatively affect the individual. These stories depict the multiple lives an artist leads, the inherent selfishness of creation, and how parent and childhood impact both parties. Characters deal with the gender norms society has placed on them as well as their own pretentiousness and anxieties surrounding those norms. I was most interested, while writing this thesis, in following the lead set forth by satirists and humorists like Cynthia Ozick, Becky Mandelbaum, and George Saunders, who portray artists as confident and ignorant figures and art itself a noble endeavor worthy enough to ruin one’s life over. This work is also influenced by the short fiction of Miranda July, wherein sensuality and desire are often at the forefront, rendered with an honest pen. Poppyseeds: Arts & Crafts can be called surreal and satirical, a bit Midwestern, and overall laughable. Motherhood is written about often. And so is art and its ability to both create and destroy us.