Abstract: Editorial for Current Narratives, Issue 4, 2014. This journal article is available in Current Narratives: http://ro.uow.edu.au/currentnarratives/vol1/iss4/2 Editorial Marcus O’Donnell1 University of Wollongong This issue marks the re-launch of Current Narratives after a hiatus of two years. We hope to continue to publish a broad range of interdisciplinary work concerned with narrative, narrative writing and narrative inquiry. This issue focuses on Literary Journalism as a particular field of narrative study and includes a range of different approaches. Bret Schulte’s analysis of John Hersey’s literary journalism classic Hiroshima, contrasts Hersey’s mannered objective approach with the recent work of Isabel Wilkerson. In analyzing these two important works of literary journalism, Schute not only makes important observations about the evolution of literary journalism he goes to the heart of journalism’s claims to narrative authority and the profession’s tangled claims to objectivity. Ruth Walker’s story and exegesis about a bar fight that leads to the death of a homeless man also tangles with objectivity and the telling of ‘true’ stories. Her reflective version of the popular true crime genre is matched by an exegetical analysis of her own work which teases out the play between norms and narratives in this type of non-fiction. These two investigations of the form are complemented by two essays about teaching literary journalism and four examples of literary narratives produced by final year journalism students. My own essay highlights the possibilities of personal creativity in the literary journalism classroom as a unique pedagogical opportunity in a journalism curriculum usually focused on rule bound production processes and an objective stance. Siobhan McHugh’s essay looks at the way her students translated literary journalism theory into practice and introduces the student narratives which follow. Current Narratives was founded as an interdisciplinary journal to investigate narrative forms, narrative inquiry and the many ways that narrative intersects with disciplinary meaning making. It was always our intention to publish creative narratives alongside this academic research so it gives me particular pleasure to bring you these examples of literary journalism as part of our re-launch issue. We welcome the submission of both academic and creative approaches to narrative and narrative studies and look forward to publishing an exciting variety of work next year.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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