Writing in an Expanded Field - Ruth Skilbeck, David McKnight, Bem Le Hunte
- When:18th October
- Time:3:00pm - 5:00pm
- Location:Room 327, Robert Webster Building
From writing for publics to writing for scholars: how ‘disruptive’ writer-intellectuals are creating new forms of writing and reading.
University-based writers, who have come into universities from media communications and creative practice face, and have to find their own ways around very specific challenges, of authorial and self identity, when they make the transition to publishing as writer (journalist; novelist) and scholarly researcher.
How do writers who have identities in creative media, journalism, media and communications who have taken PhDs find their own authentic ways of moving from publishing as practitioners to publishing as scholars and researchers, based in universities – yet reaching out to wider audiences in both scholarly publishing and general educated readership?
What changes does this process and search bring about in identity as authors, and selves, how does this affect writers’ writing?
In what ways is this relatively new phenomenon in Australia creating new texts, new forms of authorship and new audiences? And new ways of reading?
Ruth Skilbeck, David McKnight and Bem Le Hunte, three writers at different stages, post PhD, talk about their own individual experiences, raise questions and discuss the challenges and discoveries of publishing (as more than ‘one’ authorial voice), in their own, fluid, nuanced voices, and identities– as polyphonic author/creative artist/journalism intellectuals, in the changing scholarly and commercial global publishing landscapes.
Dr David McKnight is a Senior Research Fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW. He is the author of three books on topics diverse as contemporary politics, recent Australian history and international espionage. David also contributes regularly to the opinion pages of Australian newspapers.
Dr Bem le Hunte is a lecturer in the Journalism and Media Research Centre as well as a best-selling author, currently writing her fourth novel. She has worked for over twenty-three years as a creative director and written for over 500 clients across all media – from print and film to radio and digital. She recently gained her doctorate in creative writing from the University of Sydney.
Dr Ruth Skilbeck, is a lecturer in the Journalism and Media Research Centre as well as a widely published arts writer and journalist in Ireland, the UK, and Australia – where she started up an international media business specializing in arts feature writing. Since gaining her MA in Writing and PhD in 2007, from UTS, she has published 12 research articles in peer reviewed, scholarly journals and books.
“From polysemy to polyphony, from writing for publics to writing
for scholars, to moving the goal posts. Three different writers with varied
perspectives talk about their experiences of writing in an expanded field in
the new age of digital media communication, when traditional forms of
journalism are dissolving and morphing into social media polyphony, and
creative writing is expanding into multi modal art, how is authentic meaning
voiced and communicated- by writers in the process of adapting to these
changes? ” Ruth Skilbeck
