Clarifying creative nonfiction through the personal essay

In a recent issue of TEXT, Matthew Ricketson sought to clarify the &lsquo;boundaries between fiction and nonfiction&rsquo;.&nbsp;In his capacity as a teacher of the creative nonfiction form he writes, &lsquo;I have lost count of the number of times, in classes and in submitted work, that students have described a piece of nonfiction as a novel&rsquo;. The confusion thus highlighted is not restricted to Ricketson&rsquo;s journalism students. In our own university&rsquo;s creative writing cohort, students also struggle with difficulties in melding the research methodology of the journalist with the language and form of creative writing required to produce nonfiction stories for a 21st century readership.Currently in Australia creative nonfiction is enthusiastically embraced by publishers and teaching institutions. Works of memoir proliferate in the lists of mainstream publishers, as do anthologies of the essay form. During a time of increasing competition and desire for differentiation between institutions, when graduate outcomes form a basis for marketing university degrees, it is hardly surprising that, increasingly, tertiary writing teachers focus on this genre in their writing programs. A second tension has arisen in higher education more generally, which affects our writing students&rsquo; approaches to tertiary study. The student writers of the 21st century emerge from a digitally literate and socially collaborative generation: the NetGen(eration). From a learner-centric viewpoint, they could be described as time-poor, and motivated by work-integrated learning with its perceived close links to workplace contexts and to writing genres. They seek just-in-time learning to meet their immediate employment needs, which inhibits the development of their capacity to adapt their researching and writing to various genres and audiences. This article examines issues related to moving these NetGen student writers into the demanding and rapidly expanding creative nonfiction market. It is form rather than genre that denotes creative nonfiction and, we argue, it is the unique features of the personal essay, based as it is on doubt, discovery and the writer&rsquo;s personal voice that can be instrumental in teaching creative nonfiction writing to our digitally and socially literate cohort of students.<br /

Black and white : in search of an ‘apt’ response to Indigenous writing

&lsquo;The good editor,&rsquo; suggests Thomas McCormack in his Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist, &lsquo;reads, and &hellip; responds aptly&rsquo; to the writer&rsquo;s work, &lsquo;where &ldquo;aptly&rdquo; means &ldquo;as the ideal appropriate reader would&rdquo;.&rsquo; McCormack develops an argument that encompasses the dual ideas of sensibility and craft as essential characteristics of the fiction editor. But at an historical juncture that has seen increasing interest in the publication of Indigenous writing, and when Indigenous writers themselves may envisage a multiplicity of readers (writing, for instance, for family and community, and to educate a wider white audience), who is the &lsquo;ideal appropriate reader&rsquo; for the literary works of the current generation of Australian Indigenous writers? And what should the work of this &lsquo;good editor&rsquo; be when engaging with the text of an Indigenous writer? This paper examines such questions using the work of Margaret McDonell and Jennifer Jones, among others, to explore ways in which non-Indigenous editors may apply aspects of McCormack&rsquo;s &lsquo;apt response&rsquo; to the editing of Indigenous texts. <br /

The Fiftieth Gate : an Australian case study in twentieth-century \u27popular\u27 publishing

On Sunday 6 April 1997, historian Mark Baker\u27s first non-academic book was launched at Melbourne\u27s iconic migrant portal, Station Pier. The guest list of over 500 invitees included representatives of many print media organisations, most of whom interviewed the author. His photograph was reproduced a week later in the \u27Agenda\u27 section of The Age newspaper. In this portrait, Baker leans on the railings beside the massive structure of Station Pier. Framed by sea and sky, he is caught glancing pensively over his shoulder past the camera and into the middle distance. He is alone. The day is bleak. Here, the reader is invited to surmise, is a man with much on his mind. In a flash of inspiration the sub-editor has prefaced the accompanying caption, \u27Back to the future\u27, linking the story with the mass media of film and television

“With One Voice and One Heart”: Choral Singing as Embodied Ecclesiology

In the twentieth century, several Orthodox and Catholic theologians promoted an ecclesiology centred on the Eucharistic gathering. But while the sacrament of the Eucharist has typically been the focus of such “Eucharistic ecclesiologies,” the role of music in church services remains much less discussed. The Orthodox liturgy and patristic writers, such as the fourth-century St Basil of Caesarea, describe singing as an ecclesial act uniting worshippers as one body. Numerous recent scientific studies similarly suggest that choral music promotes social cohesion even at the physiological level. These scientific sources point to the ecclesial importance of choral singing and raise pastoral questions about the ways that churches work to include worshippers in the unifying act of music making

Automatic nesting seabird detection based on boosted HOG-LBP descriptors

Seabird populations are considered an important and accessible indicator of the health of marine environments: variations have been linked with climate change and pollution 1. However, manual monitoring of large populations is labour-intensive, and requires significant investment of time and effort. In this paper, we propose a novel detection system for monitoring a specific population of Common Guillemots on Skomer Island, West Wales (UK). We incorporate two types of features, Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG) and Local Binary Pattern (LBP), to capture the edge/local shape information and the texture information of nesting seabirds. Optimal features are selected from a large HOG-LBP feature pool by boosting techniques, to calculate a compact representation suitable for the SVM classifier. A comparative study of two kinds of detectors, i.e., whole-body detector, head-beak detector, and their fusion is presented. When the proposed method is applied to the seabird detection, consistent and promising results are achieved. © 2011 IEEE

Automated visual surveillance of a population of nesting seabirds

Seabird populations are a valuable and accessible indicator of marine health: population changes have been linked with fish stock levels, climate change, and pollution. Understanding the development of particular colonies requires detailed data, but manual collection methods are labour intensive and error prone. Our work is concerned with development of computer vision algorithms to support autonomous visual monitoring of cliff-nesting nesting seabirds, and collection of behavioural data on a scale not feasible using manual methods. This work has been conducted at the University of Lincoln (UK), in collaboration with the Centre for Computational Ecology and Environmental Science (CEES) at Microsoft Research Cambridge. Our work has been ongoing for around 12 months, and focussed on robust image processing techniques capable of detecting and localising individual birds in image and video data. In our case, we are using data captured from a population of Common Guillemots (Uria aalge) resident on Skomer Island (UK) during the summer of 2010. This work represents a unique adaptation of computer vision technology, and we present a discussion of current and future technical challenges, processing techniques which we have developed, and some preliminary evaluation and results. In particular, we consider techniques based on feature based detection of birds and their body parts using gradient image features

Darmstadt 1986

&nbsp; &nbsp

Autonomous monitoring of cliff nesting seabirds using computer vision

In this paper we describe a proposed system for automatic visual monitoring of seabird populations. Image sequences of cliff face nesting sites are captured using time-lapse digital photography. We are developing image processing software which is designed to automatically interpret these images, determine the number of birds present, and monitor activity. We focus primarily on the the development of low-level image processing techniques to support this goal. We first describe our existing work in video processing, and show how it is suitable for this problem domain. Image samples from a particular nest site are presented, and used to describe the associated challenges. We conclude by showing how we intend to develop our work to construct a distributed system capable of simultaneously monitoring a number of sites in the same locality

A Case Study of Eastern Region Arkansas PROMISE Participants and Their Expectations for the Future

The purpose of this study was to develop an in-depth understanding of how Eastern Arkansas youth with disabilities and their parents describe their expectations for the future, after participating in the Arkansas PROMISE program. The study sought an understanding of how participants viewed themselves and their expectations for the future, for employment, for participation in higher education, for independent living, and for future financial support. The research used a case study approach, interviewing five students and five parent participants. Participants were asked a series of questions to get an understanding of their experiences, their expectations for the future, and their understanding of the program’s impact on their lives. Thematic analysis of the interviews, case management records, and other major documents, yielded five major findings that addressed the central research question guiding this study, which is how did Arkansas PROMISE participants in Eastern Arkansas describe their expectations for the future? Participants had an expectation of success for the future, especially as it relates to employment, while expectations for higher education, independent living and future financial support were low or mixed. Overall, participants viewed the Arkansas PROMISE program as having had an impact on their lives. The findings suggested Arkansas PROMISE supported the development of self-determination in participants, through its use of learning through experience and interaction with the world. Findings suggested the multiple components offered in Arkansas PROMISE, along with the coordination of services, supported the development of an expectancy for success, especially as it relates to employment. The findings also suggested participation in early employment opportunities for the Eastern Arkansas participants impacted their expectations in employment. Sustained employment impacted participants’ expectations for independent living and future financial success. Findings suggested adult influences supported the development, or nondevelopment, of expectations for success in education, independent living, and future financial support. Further study on the impact of adult mentoring or coaching, and the use of integrated resource teams in the provision of transition supports for students and youth with disabilities, was also suggested

The reader as audience : the appeal of the writers\u27 festival to the contemporary audience

The contemporary popularity of the writers\u27 festival might appear something of a contradiction, given that such festivals are based around an art form that has been chiefly a solitary experience for the reader for several centuries. Taking the 2009 Eye of the Storm Writers\u27 Festival in Alice Springs as its case study, this article examines the motivations of the audience for participating in community-based writers\u27 festivals. Interviews with audience members suggest that the writers\u27 festival serves a much larger cultural and social role for the audience participant than simply increasing their enjoyment of literature.<br /