Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2011 The Kings of the Cannibal Islands Kent Wascom Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact
[email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE KINGS OF THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS By KENT WASCOM A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011 Copyright © 2011 Kent Wascom All Rights Reserved The members of the committee approve the Thesis of Kent Wascom defended on day of March 30, 2011. _______________________________________ Mark Winegardner Professor Directing Thesis _______________________________________ Robert Olen Butler Committee Member _______________________________________ David Kirby Committee Member Approved: _____________________________________ R.M. Berry, Chair, Department of English _____________________________________ Joseph Traves, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members. ii To Lauren iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my wife, for enduring the process, my parents for a lifetime of support, and my country, the Gulf Coast, for existing despite all odds and providing me such a place to come of age in. Andrew Smith for being the first reader of this manuscript; no glass has been raised with a better friend. Bob Shacochis for his teaching and friendship, whose intense dedication to his craft I strive to emulate, and without whom this novel would not have been. Mark Winegardner, who was the first to see this novel in its germinal form, for his commitment to me and this program, and without whom I would not have breached the walls of the Academy; may I justify the faith he put four years ago in an unproven undergraduate with a miserable GPA and a worthwhile short story.