Creative writing portfolio, fiction and non-fiction.
A collection of short stories written for college class — 2023-2024. The following excerpt is from a story titled Woman Sleeping, Artist Unknown.
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The professor that had sent Sabrina the invitation didn’t have any more information on the statue, but promised to send it their way if anything else came up. The library was a bust as well, even though Sabrina checked out pretty much every book they could find on Renaissance sculpture. Woman Sleeping wasn’t mentioned in any of them.
Gibson started acting worried around the third time they blew her off for coffee in order to continue reading one of the books or inputting different key words into search engines to see if anything new would turn up.
“I get that it’s a cool statue, but normally when the artist’s been unknown for five hundred years, it stays that way,” she said, handing Sabrina a cookie she had written This is an intervention! on in pink icing.
“I don’t care who the artist is,” Sabrina tried to explain. “I want to know who she is.”
Gibson furrowed her brow, tilting her head in confusion. “She’s a statue. She’s not anyone.”
But Sabrina knew that wasn’t true. When they had looked at Woman Sleeping, they had felt something. A spark. A connection. She was someone, and only Sabrina could find out who.
“Are you in love with her or something?” Gibson joked. Sabrina ignored her, taking a bite from the intervention cookie and carefully bookmarking the article they had been scouring for later, when Gibson wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. They’d never been in love with a person, so the idea of them being in love with a statue was ridiculous. They were just curious. No, not curious. They were determined.
A longer (unfinished) project, written for a college class on the novella during the spring semester of 2025.
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It was close to half past five when there came a rapping at the door of the apartments I kept in Grosvenor Square. Although I sat in the small parlor that the entryway led to and could have easily seen who my guest was, I had a disparaging view of most of the persons who wished to call on me uninvited, especially so close to suppertime. Instead, I simply turned the page of the latest issue of The Mysteries of London, my absolute favorite penny dreadful (the reading of which I was sure would be considered beneath a lady of my station, but I had a penchant for the cheap twists and turns provided within) and ignored the noise.
The rapping repeated itself, more insistent and now paired with a voice declaring, “Lot! I know you’re in there!”
There was only a single person who called me Lot, so I carefully dog eared my page, setting it on the mahogany side table next to the brocaded red chair I had situated myself in and slipped into the entryway, stepping past the coat rack to open the undecorated front door. As expected, the person on the other side was Mx. Ivy Claremont, who pushed past me into my dwelling without so much as a hello, gesticulating wildly with a newspaper clutched in their hand. Without bothering to stop, they let themself into the parlor, tracking a small amount of mud onto the Persian carpet that I had recently had installed, an issue I made note to report to my housekeeper at the earliest convenience.
Despite all of this behavior, I was still pleased to see Mx. Claremont. We had met at a rather boring gala a few years back, and we had been close friends ever since, as I appreciated having someone else around with a healthy level of disrespect for the society we found ourselves in. Mx. Claremont was an American, so they tended to be overly rude, since most would brush it away as a characteristic of their birth nation. They were all of six and twenty years of age, a short height with hair that was choppy and pale red, often tucked under a paperboy’s cap. They were dressed tonight like they usually were, wide legged trousers and a slightly wrinkled collared shirt under a pinstripe vest.
Shaking my head fondly, I shut the front door and followed my friend into my sitting room, taking my seat once more as they grinned at me, paper in hand.
“Lot, have you seen the evening paper?” they asked, despite the fact that the copy they now held was almost certainly the one that had been dropped on my doorstep about an hour ago.
“I’ll admit, I’m curious to see what is in it that would garner such a reaction from you, dear Ivy,” I replied. “Won’t you take a seat?”
“You’ve no sense of drama, Lot.” Instead of taking the offered seat, Mx. Claremont tracked a few more spots of mud past my cleanly carved coffee table to hold the paper up for me, unfurling it slowly until I could read the headline on the front page.
LORD RAVENWOOD HAD AN HEIR, SAYS FORMER HOUSEMAID
Despite my penchant for dramatics in stories, I tend to think of myself as much more levelheaded in real life. However, I am not too proud to admit that when I read those fateful words, I let out a very loud gasp.
An essay written junior year of college on the origin of vampire fiction in the Victorian era.
An essay written senior year of college analyzing the work of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska.