Cirrus@Austlit

'The tension between the artist finding their own unique voice and the use of other artists as exemplars which, effectively, negates the notion of unique-ness and relies on rules and general tenets, is highly evident in the teaching of emerging writers in university creative writing programmes. This paper seeks to unpack elements of this tension by considering the ways in which teaching identities intersect with pedagogical practice, particularly around the rules which govern writing schedules and engagement with creative content making. I consider two opposing notions of creative practice – the strict, worker-like ideal versus Muse-driven, inspired artistry – to challenge some of the ‘self-evident’ tools of creative writing teaching. In particular, I look at the ubiquitous nature of the ‘write every day’ and ‘keep a journal’ mantras which have permeated both my student and teaching experiences in the academy. I argue that if we acknowledge creative writing practices as ‘personal and cultural’ then we must be wary, as creative writing instructors, of insisting on fixed notions of what a writer looks like.' (Publication abstract)

'This paper explores the connection between the mask and fiction writing. Freud has theorised the identifications of writers and readers with the masks of literary personae, but my interest in this essay is with how the mask of a narrator or character can function uncannily to impede identification. I am also interested in research emerging from neuroscience, socobiology and robotics, the last of which has drawn attention to the ‘uncanny valley’, an affect generated by cybernetic beings that deny – by virtue of their mask-like faces – the neuronal mirror activity fundamental to human identity. Both Freudian and emerging scientific research provide the context for the question I ask here: how might we understand the affect generated by a fiction writer who uses the uncanny mask of a narrator or character to refuse opportunities for identification and to elicit, instead, an uncanny crisis in subjectivity within the reader? To answer this question, I employ a hybrid autoethnographic methodology that recognises the primacy of feeling when it comes to the experience of the uncanny and that acknowledges my own compromised position as a writer invested in such unfriendly or sadistic affects.' (Publication abstract)

'Literary texts reveal aspects of lived experience, historical reality and subjectivity. In Uses of Literature, Rita Felski (2008) argues that they therefore take part in practices of knowing. In the following paper, writers’ recognition of moments of discovery as described in The Paris Review Interviews is contrasted with biomedical scientists’ discussions of their salient discoveries in interviews from the Australian Academy of Science’s website. While writing in the biomedical sciences has long been assumed to consist of ‘writing up’ results established in a laboratory, some research into scientific writing suggests that the process of writing itself clarifies scientists’ thinking. The following paper compares interviews with writers and interviews with scientists using an online text analysis tool, Voyant. It asks how the conceptualisation of discoveries made by biomedical scientists differs from or aligns with notions of discovery among fiction writers, and what role the interview process plays in revealing how writers and scientists write. Long-held assumptions about writers’ and scientists’ practices affect approaches by interviewers to their subjects, yet analysis of existing interviews demonstrates how discoveries emerge in the fiction writing process; in contrast, interview questions asked of scientists likely obscure the role of writing in their work.' (Publication abstract)

'How should creative writers, including HIV-negative writers, think through HIV as a livable illness? What is the potential for writing gay fiction in an era of ‘post-crisis’? This creative writing research draws links between literary modernism’s roots in crisis and the roots of contemporary gay realist fiction in the AIDS crisis. It suggests these origins place similar demands on writers to re-conceive elements of fiction. This paper, primarily, outlines challenges of representing HIV in contemporary fiction, and then suggests that contemporary HIV’s history of crisis provides ways to address these challenges, that the challenges may be productive. Because HIV in contemporary life is doubly invisible – viral loads may be undetectable, and the ongoing crisis can be understood as marginal or tactically historicised – aspects of creative writing after antiretrovirals exist in conversation with uncertainty, including elements that are otherwise put to representative use. By looking at some examples of post-crisis writing in contemporary gay realist fiction, the paper establishes the potential for HIV-positive representations to shift fiction-writing practice, bringing aspects of the novel such as time, metaphor and textual representation towards an aesthetics of post-crisis.' (Publication abstract)

'In 2019, Dan Mallory, book editor turned author of the enormously successful thriller, The Woman in the Window, was exposed as a pathological dissembler. Faking cancer, an Oxford PhD, a prestigious career, and tragic family deaths, Mallory constructed a distressing history in order to gain authority and influence. Examining the complexities of the fraud in relation to other contemporary fakes, this paper contends that impostors expose the value systems of power, especially those situated within gatekeeping institutions that enable grifters to thrive. It asserts that despite humiliating exposure, or the excoriation of outraged readers, the impostor invariably succeeds, perpetuating an exclusive monoculture in which the same voices, both real and imagined, are heard and received. The Mallory controversy emerges within a succession of impostures fixated on crossing boundaries from privilege to disadvantage and trauma, revealing an identity politics located within the commodification of the marketable ‘other’. The hunger for narratives of ‘authentic’ suffering comes to represent a form of literary virtue signalling which exploits ‘otherness’ to satisfy middle-class stereotypes and prejudices. Imbricated with issues of appropriation and theft, the fake treats suffering as an object to be possessed, yet also functions to uncover a sequence of literary and cultural fault-lines.'  (Publication abstract)

'The creative writing curriculum has historically focussed on discipline-specific skills, developing students’ proficiency in literary forms, craft and techniques. However, contemporary writers are increasingly expected to participate in the economy of ideas through festival appearances, debates, and other forms of public speaking – skills that the creative writing curriculum has yet to fully contend with. We argue for the value of teaching debate as a distinct topic of inquiry for creative writing students, and hold that pedagogical innovation is required to address the changing nature of literary cultures and their increasing orientation towards performativity. This article establishes a new pedagogical model designed to introduce creative writing students to the study and practice of debate, comprising four key stages: modelling, scaffolding, debating and reflection. This learning progression not only fosters students’ oral argumentation skills, but also prompts critical reflection on the way key ideas in their field connect with their creative works. We contend that introducing debate into the creative writing curriculum addresses broader shifts in the writing and publishing industry, and that oral argumentation and debate should be considered key graduate competencies for creative writing students in the twenty-first century.' (Publication abstract)

'In this article, I explore how creative writing links to mobile media ethnographic practices. Through my digital ethnographies, I have found empirical evidence that socialising, art-making, and wayfaring can and do occur simultaneously in online and offline worlds. The more than textual, more than representational, material and corporeal experiences, and everyday processes are important to how we imagine and theorise art-making practices with mobile media. In this article, I pose the question: How can fiction techniques be used as a method to expose links between digital wayfaring and the creative writing practices? I explore this question through three fictionalised vignettes based on material from my ethnographies. These are grounded in a discussion of non-representational theory as a theoretical perspective to situate the everyday creative practices that go into mobile media art projects involving creative writing.' (Publication abstract)