Helen Pleasance – författare

Exploring current debates in creative writing about the borders between fiction and creative nonfiction, this collection of essays draws on concepts of the uncanny and hauntology to challenge, subvert and transgress the boundary between forms. Hauntology, as originally defined by Derrida, challenges the certainties of ontology, in a similar way to debates about truth in creative nonfiction; by bringing together authors that undermine the fiction/nonfiction binary, Haunted Writing considers the ways in which real events and experiences haunt writers as they craft their work. Offering insight into how the past – both personal and historical – is experienced and understood in the present, this book includes writing from a diverse group of established and emerging authors who situate their work on genre boundaries and discuss their own creative practice to show how their writing ‘haunts’ real events.With essays covering a range of ideas from subjectivity, intersectionality and challenging dominant versions of history, to braiding personal and researched stories, playfulness, experimentation and creating stories from archival documents, this beautifully written collection intervenes in contemporary discussions in creative writing and culture surrounding ownership, appropriation and ethics. Bringing a fresh voice and new perspectives to ever-present questions within creative writing, Haunted Writing uncovers how the past is a spectre that disrupts contemporary writing.

Exploring current debates in creative writing about the borders between fiction and creative nonfiction, this collection of essays draws on concepts of the uncanny and hauntology to challenge, subvert and transgress the boundary between forms. Hauntology, as originally defined by Derrida, challenges the certainties of ontology, in a similar way to debates about truth in creative nonfiction; by bringing together authors that undermine the fiction/nonfiction binary, Haunted Writing considers the ways in which real events and experiences haunt writers as they craft their work. Offering insight into how the past – both personal and historical – is experienced and understood in the present, this book includes writing from a diverse group of established and emerging authors who situate their work on genre boundaries and discuss their own creative practice to show how their writing ‘haunts’ real events.With essays covering a range of ideas from subjectivity, intersectionality and challenging dominant versions of history, to braiding personal and researched stories, playfulness, experimentation and creating stories from archival documents, this beautifully written collection intervenes in contemporary discussions in creative writing and culture surrounding ownership, appropriation and ethics. Bringing a fresh voice and new perspectives to ever-present questions within creative writing, Haunted Writing uncovers how the past is a spectre that disrupts contemporary writing.

Music, Memory and Memoir provides a unique look at the contemporary cultural phenomenon of the music memoir and, leading from this, the way that music is used to construct memory. Via analyses of memoirs that consider punk and pop, indie and dance, this text examines the nature of memory for musicians and the function of music in creating personal and cultural narratives. This book includes innovative and multidisciplinary approaches from a range of contributors consisting of academics, critics and musicians, evaluating this phenomenon from multiple academic and creative practices, and examines the contemporary music memoir in its cultural and literary contexts.

Music, Memory and Memoir provides a unique look at the contemporary cultural phenomenon of the music memoir and, leading from this, the way that music is used to construct memory. Via analyses of memoirs that consider punk and pop, indie and dance, this text examines the nature of memory for musicians and the function of music in creating personal and cultural narratives. This book includes innovative and multidisciplinary approaches from a range of contributors consisting of academics, critics and musicians, evaluating this phenomenon from multiple academic and creative practices, and examines the contemporary music memoir in its cultural and literary contexts.

Venue Stories is an anthology of creative non-fiction that remembers, celebrates and reinvigorates our complex and plural relationship with small and independent music spaces. Written by musicians, promoters, fans and academics who have a shared passion for small music venues and musical cultures in all their splendid variety, this anthology features memoir, essays, life writing, historiography and autoethnography. Each chapter is united by a focus on the personal, the sensory and half-remembered. These are stories that cross disciplinary lines and blur distinctions between creativity, reportage and critical analysis. Venue Stories pays a visit to the toilet venues, back rooms and ad-hoc club nights that make up so much of our musical landscape. It spends time in small and local venues and asks what they mean in personal and cultural terms. Writers visit celebrated spots, long forgotten spaces and emergent venues. Whatever the lineage, they are independent, original and wonderfully weird. The stories are memories of seismic gigs and life-altering raves. They are mosaic remembrances and recollections; funny, heart-breaking, rage induced and sometimes a combination of all of these things. This is a collection of stories by and for fans, band members, merch sellers, pint pullers, journalists with a freebie, roadies with a backache and sound techs with an earache.