AustLit

'This essay explores the practice of personal letter writing with reference to autobiographical theory, memory and trauma. It considers the extent to which the process of writing letters can assuage the difficulties of growing up in a family riddled with secrets and trauma. The writer uses her youthful fantasies of the philosopher Nietzsche and her mature understanding of his life, alongside her relationship with an authoritarian and damaged father, to explore some connections between these two seemingly disparate lives and how they link to her own. Letters to self, to family and friends, and in adulthood to other writers, including Drusilla Modjeska, Helen Garner and Gerald Murnane, frame the creative efforts to reorder lived experience. The narrative weaves between letter writing and life experience, at different stages, to explore how the rational abstractions of a philosopher and the idiosyncratic musings of an autobiographer might come together in unexpected ways. The creative element derives from the juxtaposition of such elements and the writer’s attempts to make sense of them.' (Publication summary)

'The new shorter Oxford English dictionary’s first definition of ‘violent’ as a transitive verb is ‘strain the meaning of (a text)’. This word is not in currency and ‘violate’ performs the transitive function, although it does not have a definition that specifically refers to actions against texts. That we can be violent against texts is significant for understanding critical and creative judgment in literary practice. The relevance of violence for literature involves more than portrayals of violent acts. It also involves the violation of tacit contracts of writing and interpretation.' (Publication abstract)

'Writing memoir can create self-understanding; and reading, or listening to, the life stories of others can promote empathy through a deep engagement with the lives of other people. However, telling, or listening to, a complicated or traumatic life story is not without risks. Remembering and attributing meaning to events always talks place within a context. When I was a child my family was caught up in complex, violent, postcolonial Cold War politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uncertain subject positions, political complexities, and concerns for family members can all mean that complex judgments must be made about when, if, and how to tell stories like mine. Shared family experiences do not necessarily mean shared family meanings, or shared understandings about what information to conceal and what to reveal. Using insights from the fields of narrative writing, memory and trauma studies, I draw on two autobiographies, Alison Bechdel’s Fun home, and Ruth Kluger’s Still alive, along with my own experiences of life writing, to examine why certain memories or testimonies may be silenced in public and private discourses of remembering.' (Publication summary)

'The pressure for commercially published memoirs to offer a tragedy-to-triumph redemptive arc is exacerbated when the memoir is about disability. I explore how I attempted to contest this narrative arc, using a thematic rather than chronological approach and adopting the personal essay form. I also unpack the role of metaphor in representing a disability such as autism and the complexities of writing from a socio-cultural (rather than symbolic or medical) paradigm of disability. I examine one of the key dilemmas of writing a relational memoir and the creative judgements that the author must make.' (Publication abstract)

'Dr Rachel Robertson visited the University of Canberra in 2011 and presented a seminar to students and staff about creative nonfiction and her own writing. Following are edited excerpts from the seminar, which took place on 13 October 2011.' (Publication abstract)

'We make judgments every day about all kinds of things. Whether wrestling with student assignments or finessing a paper for publication, the same critical principles and rational processes apply, so making judgments about paring back personal clutter should be comparatively easy—or is it? As one horsewoman found out, an exercise in defragging the horse stuff was about as conflicted and complex as it gets.' (Publication abstract)