Creative work as scholarly work

Abstract

This article identifies the debate regarding differentiation between creative and exegetical (or scholarly) components in postgraduate research submissions and surveys the 2000-year history of creative-exegetical writing. It marks out a body of work where creative writers themselves explore and direct the theory and analysis of creative writing’s processual activities, suggesting a hybrid form that constitutes a genre in itself – what we call the Creative-Exegetical. In conclusion, the article argues acceptance for the creative work as scholarly work in the creative writing research space. The trigger for this article was provided by Peter Nash, a student at Griffith University, Australia, who in 2018 thought to challenge the status quo by submitting a crime fiction story as a ‘reflective essay’ in an Honours-level research course. Pete had already published stories in TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses which were fictions dealing with aspects of the writing process, and he wanted to go further.