Non-Fiction Portfolio

Publications
as Megan Maulsby


“A Library On Wheels” 
published in Greyrock Review, April 2021

This is a narrative nonfiction journal article I wrote for my Intermediate Creative Writing: Nonfiction course. It tells the story of a book mobile program started by a team of librarian educators in a Georgia school district. I interviewed the program's creators as well as the book mobile bus driver, a school librarian who used the program, and the elementary children who benefitted. I focused the story on the building of the bus from the idea stage to a successful mobile library.
"A Library on Wheels" appears from pages 94-103 in the online edition here: GREYROCK REVIEW 2021.


Previous work:
As the mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, I blogged for several years about raising her. One of my blog posts was published by a site that advocates for school inclusion for children with disabilities:

The update after that post is here:


Unpublished Portfolio Work
Non-fiction work created for my degree 
in Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts 
(with a minor in Creative Writing) 
from Colorado State University:

Essays

“The Treatment of Nonconformist Women in We and The Bell Jar

 
In this essay, written for my 20th Century Fiction course, I compare the novels We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. The most prominent female characters in each book are both unique women living in an oppressive society who struggle with the consequences of their nonconformity.

Read the full essay here:


Star Wars, John Williams, and the Leitmotif”
      

In this essay, written for my Music Appreciation course, I analyze the music composed by John Williams for the Star Wars movie franchise from the 1970s to today. I show how the music adds to the characterizations and the storytelling of the films.

Read the full essay here:


“A Year of Rock: 1968; Music in a Time of Crisis and Revolution”

This is an essay and PowerPoint presentation I created for my History of Rock ‘n’ Roll course. It describes the state of rock music in 1968, a year of significant socio-political change for the United States. I analyze the changes in rock music from the perspectives of economic, cultural, and both global and domestic political events.
Read the full essay here:
View the accompanying PowerPoint here:


Reports and Journal Articles

“Contributing Factors in Low Reading Literacy Levels of American Children"
This poster describes my research into the factors that contribute to literacy challenges for children in the U.S. The poster and report were created for my Junior Seminar for Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts. 

Read the accompanying report here: 


Sesame Street moves to HBO: An Interdisciplinary Look at the Impact on American Children”
 
This research report, also created for my Junior Seminar for Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts, is presented in a visual way with a PowerPoint slide. It explores the question of the educational impact of HBO’s takeover of Sesame Street through the disciplinary lenses of politics, education, sociology, economics, and television theater.



How Animals Speak, Learn, and Innovate Like Humans: 
An Exploration of Animal Cognition 
August 2019 Scientific American Special Issue mock-up 

For a course I took called Writing in the Disciplines: Sciences, I produced a mock-up of a Scientific American Special Issue with my chosen theme of Animal Cognition. I wrote three nonfiction science articles and arranged them in the magazine format. 

The articles' titles are:

1. “Honey Bees Aren’t Too Busy to Learn Basic Arithmetic” 

2. “The Intelligence to Learn With Objects: A Comparison Between Parrots and Monkeys”

3. “So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish: What We Know About Dolphin and Orca Intelligence”

I really enjoyed the scientific research involved in producing these articles. I learned about journalism and writing about real science for a general audience that wants to be entertained while learning science.

Read the full magazine here: