Five Postmodern Short Stories

Abstract

This is a creative project as part of a dissertation. It has five short stories that share the same universe. Although each of these stories is self-contained, they are written in such a way that they can have sequels, perhaps even prequels. They are mostly character studies but they explore single units of the characters‘ personas. That is the power of short stories, that they can explore a specific side of a story, or in other words remind us that we all know only part of a person‘s story. While novels have the potential to explore characters and stories more holistically, short stories work as miniatures of that. But a collection of short stories can be written so that they connect with other stories in the shared universe, and each of the stories can explore a singular event or characteristic of the characters in it. That is something I have explored in my stories here. The stories also marry an aspect of the character‘s persona with a particular theme of that story. These stories are psychological, and have some elements of magic realism. But ultimately they are what someone would call postmodern tales. The stories, however, are not intentionally postmodern, but the times we live in reflect the postmodern perspective in my writings.