When Your Subjects Do Not Agree: An ‘Idiosyncratically Australian Perspective’

Abstract

When a decision to interview creative non-fiction writers in a bid to begin to formalise a dialogue about the genre, it became as much about the nomenclature as the process. The reaction has been termed an ‘idiosyncratically Australian perspective’: the three major writers who were approached for comment did not provide what was expected and all refused requests for interviews, giving reasons that undermined the conceptual framework of the project. But rather than scrapping the original concept, it was decided to use the anti-commentary as a launching pad for the project which eventuated as Behind the Text (Joseph 2016). This chapter looks at how to navigate a project when the majority of practitioners do not share the same views on the transmission and sharing of knowledge, and even the communication of ideas about the practice of creative non-fiction.