Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Novel and Memoir : Teaching Hybridity and Experimentation between Genres
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Since the memoir boom in the 1990s, non-fiction forms have continued to increase in popularity and market share, and hybrid forms such as autofiction and semi-autobiographical novels have established a pronounced place in literary culture. Yet many creative writing programmes remain focussed on fiction, reflecting students’ overwhelming interest in pursuing the novel as a form, and reluctance to see their own lived experiences as material for creative work. However, rather than seeing the novel and memoir as competing or dichotomous forms, we suggest that the trend in literary culture is to witness a collapsing of these distinctions in favour of hybrid works which sit on a spectrum of perceived truth claims. This article outlines a pedagogical response to a gap that exists between students’ understandings of the novel and memoir genres, and the increasing complication and hybridity emerging between those forms. We outline the pedagogical theory informing our approach, which emphasises complex and hybrid thinking, experimentation and reflective authorship practice. We argue that teaching novel and memoir in tandem encourages students to view life writing and fiction as existing on a spectrum of formal possibilities rather than fixed generic types, and cultivates students’ awareness of these developments in the field.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon New Writing vol. 19 no. 2 2022 24640288 2022 periodical issue 2022 pg. 140-152
Last amended 3 Jun 2022 11:32:33
140-152 Novel and Memoir : Teaching Hybridity and Experimentation between Genressmall AustLit logo New Writing
X