AustLit

'The Sunlit Zone, the major project of my PhD thesis, is a verse novel about trauma and transformation. The work is concerned with the ways in which transformation might occur at the site of "the wound" and with how the journey of protagonist, North, shifts from a state of trauma into the sunlit zone that the novel's title suggests.

'This novel looks specifically at thresholds between loss, memory, hybridity and mourning. North's twin sister, Finn, is a hybrid creature who inclines always towards the sea. The Sunlit Zone is particularly concerned with loss on both a micro level (via the childhood trauma that tracks North into adulthood) and a macro level (via the impact of new technology on the 21st century).

'Set in Melbourne in 2040, the narrative moves between past and present in order to memorialise trauma and, in doing so, locate its redemption.'

'Writing/ the Wound consists of three essays, loosely linked, which explore the concerns of The Sunlit Zone in the light of theoretical critique. It aims to create a dialogue between essays and verse novel in order to examine the question: what is the relationship between trauma, transformation and writing? The first two essays critique novels ... [more]that influenced The Sunlit Zone. Hybrid Bodies: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake explores the trauma of new technology, drawing on Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection in Powers of Horror Broken Bodies: Tim Winton's Dirt Music looks at grief, spiritual transformation and road trauma, using Jacques Derrida's The Work Mourning. The third essay, "Concealed Bodies: Writing/ the Wound" incorporates memoir, photographs and critique. Drawing in particular on Roland Barthes' critique of photographs in Camera Lucida, it looks at how memory pierces the skin of The Sunlit Zone and contributes to its central concerns. ( http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/37379731)