UC Irvine

Bright Shadows is a three-part short-story collection that explores emotional conflicts and thematic issues arising out of contemporary spiritual questions. Carl Jung’s notion of the “shadow self” is the thematic foundation of all three stories, which all differ in genre, voice, and style, but are ultimately connected by an underlying question. This isn’t an intellectual question, but rather an emotional curiosity that is felt more than thought. What are the darkest parts of ourselves that we can access? How do these parts clash when they surface up into the daylight world? These are succinct ways of putting what Bright Shadows grapples with, but they aren’t complete. These stories arise out of struggles with addiction, time spent in rehab, and encounters with violence; however, these stories also chart the path through our darker struggles. They follow along with my own study of story structure at UCI, and story structure, I hope this collection shows, is the structure of what Carl Jung called “individuation,” and what the great teacher Joseph Campbell referred to as “following your bliss.”