The dissertation will consist of a book-length collection of short stories, dealing largely in universal themes of love and death as well as working class themes, such as race, class, sexuality, identity, labor, education, poverty, hierarchy, advantage and disadvantage, friendship, and crime. The stories will mainly be set in working class environs, in particular the real-life city of Bridgeport, CT and the fictional upstate New York town of Asphodel, which serves as a symbolic gateway to the underworld and takes its name from the Asphodel Meadows in ancient Greek Mythology (the place where ordinary souls were sent to live in the afterlife). While some stories will exist solely in one of these two settings, others will pass between the two....