AustLit
Issue Details:
First known date:
2013...
vol.
17
no.
2
October
2013
of
TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs
est. 1997
TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses
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Latest Issues
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
* Contents derived from the 2013 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
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Interrogating Whiteness : A Precarious Cross-Cultural/Racial Creative Writing PhD Journey,
single work
criticism
'This article explores my coming-to-consciousness and dismantling of whiteness – of white privilege and power – in my self and in my writing during my Creative Writing PhD candidature. Throughout the course of my PhD, I embarked on a cross-cultural/racial project, which involved myself, as a white writer, grappling with the ethical uncertainties of writing about African Australians and of placing the (white) self into the racial problem. Initially, my enquiry began by exploring ways in which I might convey an accurate and dynamic picture of African Australians in my creative work; however, as I progressed in my candidature, and as I tried to find an ethical balance for representing the intercultural/racial encounters between my black African and white Australian characters, questions about the “other” turned to an interrogation of the “self”. Had I been reflecting, albeit unconsciously, my ingrained whiteness in my PhD novella? And how might I fracture whiteness in my writing (and in my self) in an attempt to establish a writing position that interrupts my unconscious acts of narrativising whiteness? ' (Author's abstract)
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Staying Alive : Contemporary English Application of Biji,
single work
criticism
'This article examines how the ancient tradition of biji notebook writing has been applied and appropriated in the 21st century by authors working in the English language. It traces the journey the biji, a traditional Chinese written form with origins in the third century, has taken and examines how it has been transformed in its contemporary use. Through a critical reading of three such biji collections – Douglas Coupland’s Survivor, a creative non-fiction hybrid that appeared in an anthology of new takes on old forms titled Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: Old Forms, Unearthed; Owen Kelly’s Sexton Blake & the Virtual Culture of Rosario: A Biji, a fractured academic essay; and Ouyang Yu’s On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, thinking Chinese and living Australian, which he defines as biji feixaoshuo or ‘pen-notes non-fiction’ – the evolution of the biji form beyond China will be traced and examined.
While there is distant tradition of biji for these contemporary authors to draw upon, there remain historical, cultural, and/or linguistic barriers between that tradition and their current practice. In this sense, they are pioneers, working to re-establish those characteristics in a radically different written world.' (Author's abstract)
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Confession and Third Party Revelation in Memoir : The Narrator, The Confessant, and Textual Strategies for Decentring the Memoirist’s Authority,
single work
criticism
'This paper explores the mechanisms of first and third party confession, and compares the different confessional approaches deployed in a range of memoirs including Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, Dave Egger’s Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and my own book, The Last Thread. My paper examines the use of both implicit and explicit self-reflexive confessional gestures regarding the ethical boundaries of the texts that memoirists have written and argues that, despite the transparency that such gestures appear to offer the reader, it is largely through the separation of the roles of narrator and confessant that occurs through third party revelation – and consequently the disruption of the prescribed roles of writer and reader as the deliverer and receiver of confession – that memoirists can effectively decentre their own authority.' (Author's abstract)
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Nested Dolls : ‘Inner Storytelling’ and the Creative Writing Process,
single work
criticism
'In 2008, life, as I had known it for the preceding four years, ended. I had been living in the red majesty of Australia’s Central Desert, building a career from a rich and unique professional platform, and personally, I had fallen in love. However, between the lines of this white-girl-in-the-outback postcard was the overwhelming reality of the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention and a hidden abusive relationship. This is a story within the story of a story, of what severance leaves in its wake; how after leaving my desert life behind, I rediscovered creative writing and through writing fiction began to edit what Maria Popova calls my ‘inner storytelling’ (Popova 2013b), learning to ‘draw positive meaning’ (Perry 2012: 77) from traumatic experience. This is a story written from what Avery F Gordon describes as my ‘haunting place’, ‘conjuring’ my ‘ghosts’ to ‘put life back in’ to my memories (Gordon 2008: 22). This is ‘that sore place’ Tom Spanbauer says is ‘within each of us that is the source for stories that no one else can tell’; this is how I began to embrace writing fiction as ‘the lie that tells the truth truer’, through the act of what he calls ‘dangerous writing’ (Spanbauer nd).' (Author's abstract)
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Leaves of a Diary : Searching for Elizabeth Gould in the Archives of the Mitchell Library,
single work
criticism
'As part of my research to write a fictional memoir of the nineteenth century zoological illustrator Elizabeth Gould, I travelled to the Mitchell Library in Sydney to view her diary, album of plant drawings and other original materials, used in preparation to create lithographs for The Birds of Australia (1840-1848). The essay uses self-reflective writing to explore my responses to interacting with the material archive of this historical subject, and how it helped to fashion her into the narrator of Elizabeth Gould: A Natural History. (Author's abstract)
- The Puzzle of the Muse, single work prose
- The House I Will Live Ini"The rhythms of my tongue lie", single work poetry
- A Novel Ideai"Cathy found the book hidden in her mother’s negligee drawer,", single work poetry
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Mid-Century Well-Meaning?,
single work
review
— Review of Southerly vol. 72 no. 1 2012 periodical issue ; -
Fascination of Islands,
single work
review
— Review of Southerly vol. 72 no. 3 2012 periodical issue ; -
Not Just Any Girl,
single work
review
— Review of Just_A_Girl 2013 single work novel ; -
How to Write a Classic,
single work
review
— Review of A Modern Classic 1986 single work autobiography prose ; -
A Song for the Heart,
single work
review
— Review of All the Way Home : A Story Told in Poems 2012 single work novel ; -
Hunting Cannibals,
single work
review
— Review of And Then When The 2011 selected work poetry ; -
Song of the Wind-up Birdman,
single work
review
— Review of The Wind-Up Birdman of Moorabool Street 2012 selected work poetry ; -
Bully for Alpha-Beast,
single work
review
— Review of Beast Language 2012 selected work poetry ; -
Behind the Eyes : Poetry of Witness,
single work
review
— Review of Flame in the Fire 2011 selected work poetry ; -
The Social Media Marketplace in the 'Quaint' Creative Writing Classroom : Our Terms for Engagement,
single work
criticism
'In spite of calls for more digital engagement and the fact that students are arriving on campus with digitally connected skills, creative writing classrooms are generally ‘low tech and quaintly humanistic’. We don’t appear to be incorporating the socially networked student experiences in the quaint creative writing classroom. One of the barriers to more engagement may be one of our hard-won ‘markers of professional difference’, that is, the things that distinguish us from other classes. This particular marker is that we are not market-driven. By examining this issue (but not eliminating the marker), we might determine if we can and should open the class up to more engagement. In this paper, the terms ‘social media’ and ‘social media marketplace’ are explored in order to consider changes to the marketplace and some ways to engage with the digital world that honor our traditions and benefit our classrooms by enhancing educational experiences without excessive cost or training. ' (Publication abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Last amended 20 Jan 2017 12:09:59
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