Between the chapters : researching and conversing with contemporary Australian women writers

This paper, ‘Between the Chapters’, discusses the journey involved in researching and interviewing nine contemporary Australian women writers as part of my Doctoral thesis ‘Storylines: Women Writers in Australia, Present and Past’. The writing of the women chosen for my research covers poetry, plays, biography and fictional prose. Contemporary writers interviewed include Carmel Bird, Kate Grenville, Melissa Lucashenko, Drusilla Modjeska, Hilary McPhee, Dorothy Porter, Leah Purcell, Hannie Rayson and Gig Ryan. The notion of speaking ‘Between the Chapters’ refers to an approach that attempts to locate and discuss what occurs for women writers in their own lives as they create their fictional / poetic / theatrical / biographic stories. It also describes the sense of my research journey as entering the gaps between the chapters of the creative, academic and critical accounts of these women to hear their personal narratives. The conversations that emerged as part of the interviewing discourse became not only highly informative but transformative as the knowledge, wisdom and experience of the women writers developed into an educational exchange of the most valuable kind. The discussion in this paper covers the initial path of enquiry, the process of interview selection and the reasons for embarking on interviewing as a qualitative research method for hearing women’s stories. I then describe the personal encounters with these women writers and the findings that surfaced through this process of questioning and discovery. The paper highlights the value of firsthand accounts of women’s journeys and the enriching potential of diverse voices in one’s field of study.