This section consists of writing from both school assignments and personal creative work. Click a title to read it.
Personal Writing Projects
Woe
This is my world building project. I am inspired by classic gothic horror writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. I want to create a world of interconnected short stories that cover a vast timeline. Readers can slowly piece together the main plot through these individual “shards” of the story. Each story is titled with the year it takes place in.
Dante Archives
This is an extension of my “Woe” project that combines creative writing and web design.
I created a website that is a fictional “database of classified information.” Readers can access “files” describing the secrets of a mysterious scientific research facility. I use the Midjourney AI Image Generator to create image prompts for myself. I love this project and really enjoy writing in abstract formats rather than typical prose.
Music Blog
I briefly kept a blog where I casually wrote about some of my favorite albums.
Senior Thesis
For my final Senior Thesis Paper, I deeply analyzed the writing of my favorite author; Edgar Allan Poe. The paper specifically focuses on Poe’s use of madness as a literary element across his short stories.
Senior Thesis Symposium Presentation (2019)
I presented this shortened version of my paper to the entire faculty of the English Department as part of the final assignment.
Senior Thesis Paper (2019)
This is a link to download the entire 23-page paper.
Fiction Workshop Stories
These stories were written in various Fiction Writing Workshop courses at Quinnipiac University. We were assigned to write a short story based on a given one-word prompt.
We had mostly complete freedom other than that.
Johannesburg Mines (2018)
This was a special assignment from a Modern Literature course. The professor decided to assign one creative writing assignment for fun. We could choose one of two options: Take an existing poem and turn it into a short story, or take an existing short story and turn it into a poem. I was the only one in my class who decided to write a short story. Everyone else wrote a one-page poem, but I surprised my professor with this. I received an A and her comments read: “Wow. I feel like I inadvertently created this assignment just for you.”
A Very Exciting Message (2018)
Prompt: “Space” – I wrote a comedic story about aliens coming to Earth. Humans accidentally offend them almost immediately.
The Sneeze (2019)
Prompt: “Time” – I took this prompt as an opportunity to write a dystopian sci-fi story about the future of virtual reality gaming and how it could affect social interaction. This is one of my personal favorite things I’ve ever written.
A Painted Journal (2019)
Prompt: “Drug” – Again, I took a very broad prompt and forced it into a science fiction story. Many friends have told me I should turn this story into a comic book one day.
Research Papers
This section consists of my best scholarly writing from my time at Quinnipiac University.
THOMAS MAZZAFERRO 