creative writing – WIDE OPEN AIR EXCHANGE

A conversation about Western Sydney Literature and Working Class Literature with creative writer Emma O’Neill-Sandham who is a PhD researcher at the University of Sydney. Emma's research and creative writing are in part informed by her own life experiences in Western Sydney. This episode features Emma reading parts of her creative nonfiction piece 'The Salon' set in her mother's home hair salon. Emma is interested in stories that are told from Western Sydney cultural perspectives, and her research is spotlighting the creative works of other writers from the western suburbs. Part of Emma's doctoral research is exploring working class and Western Sydney themes through a novel she is writing as a creative practice part of her PhD. Among other milestones Emma has been awarded a Varuna Fellowship, a Western Sydney Emerging Writers Fellowship, and a Master of Creative Writing qualification from Macquarie University.

Emeritus Professor Roxanne Doty from Arizona State University has transitioned from academic writing as a Politics and Global Studies specialist to creative writing as a published poet and novelist. During her academic career, Professor Doty's work on anti-immigrantism and human rights and ethics informed a growing discontent with the kind of sanitised academic writing that was prominent in political science. This is the story of Roxanne Doty reclaiming a creative voice first within her academic writing and ultimately outside of academia as a published poet and novelist. This extended podcast version includes a further discussion of autoethnography as a method in academic writing, and more on Professor Doty's approach to creative writing and her debut novel Out Stealing Water.