AustLit

'When it comes to addressing creative writing as a topic of inquiry, the craft and the written product are usually held in two different realms. Often a collection brings together a body of writing – as essays or short stories – to celebrate and highlight finished and polished pieces of work. The process of how the final pieces came into being, often, is irrelevant. With the exception of studies produced at the postgraduate level usually, the process, pedagogical concerns, inspirations, and the discipline of creative writing are dealt with separately in studies and collections that address each specifically.' (Introduction)

'The essay charts the history and goals of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators since its beginnings in 2005, noting how the association has evolved to incorporate creative writing pedagogy and, importantly, literary translation. It draws on linguist MAK Halliday’s discussion of the ‘characterology’ of Mandarin Chinese to ask whether a literary community such as APWT might also have a ‘certain cut’ identifiable in the features and effects of the new writing that emerges from the interactions of participating practitioners as they cross boundaries and challenge limits. The essay argues that the mission of APWT is transformative and ongoing and needs greater advocacy. Examples cited include the work of Michelle Cahill and Eliza Vitri Handayani and the Dalit/Indigenous Australia special issue of Cordite.

'This discursive essay – part exegesis, part literary analysis – analyses the act of writing about Asia from Australia (and from the west). I use the circumstances of my early childhood to frame my interest in ‘Asia’, suggesting that Australia is a genuinely diverse nation that is engaged with the region but that it also retains and values a monocultural outlook. In turn, I analyse several novels by westerners about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge (including my own novel, Figurehead) to reflect on, first, cultural appropriation, and, second, the limits of empathy in fiction.'

'The 1,000-year-old Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon (Makura-no sōshi) is a definitive example of the genre of Japanese literature known as zuihitsu—literally, ‘as the brush flows’. An autobiographical account of the cloistered world of a lady-in-waiting at the Emperor’s court in tenth-century Japan, this ground-breaking text comprises a fragmented ‘miscellany’ of loosely associated ideas, personal essays and lists. Beyond its singular importance as a historical record of daily life which is almost microscopic in its detail, The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon endures to this day as a source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and scholars interested in experimenting with narrative form. This paper offers a creative, scholarly examination of formal aspects of Shōnagon’s landmark zuihitsu in relation to my own creative nonfiction work, currently being undertaken as part of a PhD in creative writing at Griffith University. In particular, the fragmentation that is the Pillow Book’s defining feature, along with the associative linking techniques seen in many of the lists scattered throughout, have informed the structural interplay of the memoir material.'  (Publication abstract)