Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Surname/Family Name : BAILEY Given Name/s : JACQUELIENE SHARON Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : PhD (Creative Writing) Faculty : FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES School : SCHOOL OF THE ARTS AND MEDIA FROM THE HEART: THE GIFT EXPERIENCE OF CREATIVE WRITING AND Thesis Title : READING Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) The first part of the current thesis is a novel entitled The Eulogy, which examines the nature of love and choice in situations of intergenerational trauma, bereavement and disability. The narrator, Kathy, is at a crossroads in life and examines her family’s history through the last three generations against the backdrop of World War Two, the Malayan Conflict and the Vietnam War. The novel explores whether and under what circumstances people are able to make different choices from their forebears. In writing The Eulogy, I drew on lived experience, family stories, publicly available accounts of disability, war, and intergenerational trauma, and my own imagination. The Eulogy is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in the novel are either products of the author’s mind or are used fictitiously. The research dissertation entitled From the heart: The gift experience of creative writing and reading forms the second part of the thesis. Whilst creative writing and reading arise as objects of inquiry in a number of fields of scholarship, there has been limited examination of the experience of reading or the experience of creative writing. In this dissertation, I ask the questions: How do readers and writers describe the experience of reading and writing in their own terms? And what can this add to our understanding of modes of human interaction and being? The dissertation harnesses the conceptual power of phenomenology and interdisciplinary gift theories to deepen our understanding of creative writing and reading. I employ an empirical interpretive phenomenological methodology in this study, conducting and analysing twenty in-depth interviews with creative writers and readers who had experienced “loving” a book at some point in their lives. I look at the ways in which writers and readers describe how it feels to read a loved book, and how it feels to engage in writing fiction. The dissertation contributes to the development of a theory of creative writing and reading as gift-relations and, in a broader sense, to the development of a relational ontology of human being. 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Name Signature Date (dd/mm/yy) i The Eulogy A novel and From the heart: The gift experience of creative writing and reading Jacqueliene Bailey A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of the Arts and Media Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences UNSW Sydney 1 November 2019 Abstract The first part of the current thesis is a novel entitled The Eulogy, which examines the nature of love and choice in situations of intergenerational trauma, bereavement and disability. The narrator, Kathy, is at a crossroads in life and examines her family’s history through the last three generations against the backdrop of World War Two, the Malayan Conflict and the Vietnam War. The novel explores whether and under what circumstances people are able to make different choices from their forebears. In writing The Eulogy, I drew on lived experience, family stories, publicly available accounts of disability, war, and intergenerational trauma, and my own imagination. The Eulogy is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in the novel are either products of the author’s mind or are used fictitiously. The research dissertation entitled From the heart: The gift experience of creative writing and reading forms the second part of the thesis. Whilst creative writing and reading arise as objects of inquiry in a number of fields of scholarship, there has been limited examination of the experience of reading or the experience of creative writing. In this dissertation, I ask the questions: How do readers and writers describe the experience of reading and writing in their own terms? And what can this add to our understanding of modes of human interaction and being? The dissertation harnesses the conceptual power of phenomenology and interdisciplinary gift theories to deepen our understanding of creative writing and reading. I employ an empirical interpretive phenomenological methodology in this 2 study, conducting and analysing twenty in-depth interviews with creative writers and readers who had experienced “loving” a book at some point in their lives. I look at the ways in which writers and readers describe how it feels to read a loved book, and how it feels to engage in writing fiction. The dissertation contributes to the development of a theory of creative writing and reading as gift-relations and, in a broader sense, to the development of a relational ontology of human being. 3 Acknowledgements I could not have written this thesis without the gifts of many. I would like to thank my supervisors, Anne Brewster and Janet Chan, for their encouragement, faith and wisdom at key moments of the process. Their calm yet keen insights helped me stay on the path to completion; without them I would still be gazing intently at the bottom of yet another rabbit hole.