English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Since the memoir boom in the 1990s, non-fiction forms have continued to increase in popularity and market share, and hybrid forms such as autofiction and semi-autobiographical novels have established a pronounced place in literary culture. Yet many creative writing programmes remain focussed on fiction, reflecting students’ overwhelming interest in pursuing the novel as a form, and reluctance to see their own lived experiences as material for creative work. However, rather than seeing the novel and memoir as competing or dichotomous forms, we suggest that the trend in literary culture is to witness a collapsing of these distinctions in favour of hybrid works which sit on a spectrum of perceived truth claims. This article outlines a pedagogical response to a gap that exists between students’ understandings of the novel and memoir genres, and the increasing complication and hybridity emerging between those forms. We outline the pedagogical theory informing our approach, which emphasises complex and hybrid thinking, experimentation and reflective authorship practice. We argue that teaching novel and memoir in tandem encourages students to view life writing and fiction as existing on a spectrum of formal possibilities rather than fixed generic types, and cultivates students’ awareness of these developments in the field.

Novel and memoir: teaching hybridity and experimentation between genres