AustLit
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Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Take a Walk in Their Shoes : Empathy and Emotion in the Writing Process,
single work
criticism
'Christos Tsiolkas said Dead Europe ‘was a very difficult novel to write. It ... took me, in the writing of it, into dark and fearful places. As a writer you take on aspects of your characters and if you are not careful the world you are creating begins to blend with the world you actually inhabit’ (Tsiolkas 2008). There is substantial research demonstrating the therapeutic benefits of writing about one’s own traumas. But what are the challenges of writing fiction that requires imagining and creating traumatic events; evil, monstrous or tragic characters? If, as many argue, fiction makes readers more empathetic, it is because writers have created believable worlds that readers can inhabit. In order to create believable worlds that readers can inhabit these worlds and the characters that people them, writers have to inhabit their characters’ lives. This can mean spending years in very dark places. In this article I explore the emotional and physical impact this has on writers and look at ways writers might manage what Marguerite MacRobert calls the ‘emotional roller coaster’ (MacRobert 2012). This is an autoethnographic article and my aim is to contribute to our understanding of the processes of creative writing by exploring and interrogating my experience of writing fiction about traumatic experiences.' (Publication summary)
- Wandering Beneath the Grace of Clouds : An Interview with Janie Conway-Herron, single work interview
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‘Welcome Creative Subversions’ : Experiment and Innovation in Recent Biographical Writing,
single work
criticism
'While biography is popularly understood as a literature that tells straightforward, factual life stories, it is – as a literary form – the site of considerable experimentation. This article maps current biographical experimental practice and enquiry against the background of innovation during the twentieth century. This includes a discussion of the form and craft of biographical innovation, including the practical, theoretical and methodological issues involved, much of which has been contributed by working biographers who also reflect on biographical form through the lens of innovation in their own practice.' (Publication abstract)
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Adding to the Hall of Mirrors : A Fictocritical Response to Anthony Macris' Great Western Highway,
single work
criticism
'In this essay I take, as my departure point, Anthony Macris’ 2012 novel Great Western Highway: a love story. My specific focus is the presence of technology in the novel, and the way technology is shown to shape relations between individuals and between the individual and the world. Rather than adopt a strictly critical mode of writing, I have chosen to write this essay by oscillating between critical and creative prose, and drawing on a mixture of academic research, personal experience and anecdote. Such a mode is invited by Macris’ novel, which itself occupies the liminal space between fictional and critical writing. Furthermore, the fictocritical format of this essay allows me to deliberately confuse and conflate my own images with those from Macris’ novel. I enact this confusion in the hope that my essay becomes a contribution to Macris’ textual hall of mirrors, or what he more technically labels the ‘Generative mise en abyme’ (Macris 2008: 2).' (Publication summary)
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Re-encountering Christina Stead : Why Read ‘Workshop in the Novel’?,
single work
criticism
'Despite waves of interest in the work of Christina Stead, one aspect of her writing life has been largely neglected. From September 1943, she taught three series of extended writing workshops in New York and in the process left more than three hundred pages documenting her teaching. The question motivating this paper is: Why should we, as writers and teachers of writing, read her writing workshop notebooks nowadays? This paper will place Stead’s workshop in the context of the development of institutional teaching of novel writing and her emergence as a major writer. It will briefly examine how the notebooks have previously been understood and offer a closer analysis than has been made to date of the notebooks and their content and of the key issues raised by them. In particular, we shall explore her pedagogic focus upon workshop participants developing a rigorous, analytical approach to crafting novels and her extensive use of Georges Polti’s Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations to achieve this. That, in turn, will enable us to assess what the notebooks independently reveal about her beliefs regarding the novel and its purpose. ' (Publication summary)
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Being Read : How Writers of Fiction Manuscripts Experience and Respond to Criticism,
single work
criticism
'This paper brings into dialogue contemporary discourse in creative writing studies about approaches to reading draft fiction with a subjective account of the experience of being read. Through drawing on two key essays on reading strategies in the discipline of creative writing, statements by published authors and my own process, this paper looks at how writers respond to feedback on their writing. Reading of draft creative work occurs in overlapping contexts – in universities, by informal networks of writers and by editors – and social structures such as reading and writing groups support a writer in his or her response to criticism. The changes made to manuscripts as a result of feedback can be significant; this paper looks at the contexts in which such changes are executed. Ultimately, this paper argues that ‘communities of practice’ composed of writers who attended a university creative writing program together and who continued to read each other’s work after graduation utilised and developed strategies initiated in such programs. Such communities have benefits for their members in terms of social support and publication.' (Publication summary)
- Inki"And through stained glass", single work poetry
- The Use of the Imperative, single work prose
- Self-Flagellating Narrator, single work prose
- Journey, single work prose
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'An Irregular Book',
single work
review
— Review of Reading Coetzee 2013 single work criticism ; -
Heart of Lightness,
single work
review
— Review of Cokcraco : A Novel in Ten Cockroaches 2013 single work novel ; -
Diverse Voices in Celebration of Poetry,
single work
review
— Review of Contemporary Asian Australian Poets 2013 anthology poetry ; -
The Energy of Contemporary Chinese Poetry,
single work
review
— Review of Breaking New Sky : Contemporary Poetry from China Yu Ouyang (translator), 2013 selected work poetry ; -
The Academy Applauds,
single work
review
— Review of The Vision of Error : A Sextet of Activist Poems 2013 selected work poetry ; -
Williams' Exploratory Lyrics,
single work
review
— Review of Days Like These : New and Selected Poems : 1998-2013 2013 selected work poetry ; -
The Pain and Pleasure of a Meal Eaten Alone,
single work
review
— Review of Dining Alone : Stories from the Table for One 2013 anthology short story ; -
Reflective and Pleasurably Familiar,
single work
review
— Review of How to Tell Your Father to Drop Dead : ...And Other Stories 2013 selected work short story ; -
Walking Through Land and Memory,
single work
review
— Review of A Country in Mind : Memoir with Landscape 2013 single work autobiography prose ; -
Double Blind : Modern Discontents,
single work
review
— Review of Double Glaze 2013 selected work poetry ;
