The Australian Association of Writing Programs

My name is Yvette Walker and I am the Student Editor for February 2010. For those I did not meet at the AAWP Conference in Hamilton, I am a post-grad student at Curtin University in Western Australia entering my third year (how did that happen?) of a Doctorate of Creative Arts. I am writing a historical epistolary narrative which examines the twentieth century through the prism of three romantic relationships, three discrete sets of love letters. The ethics of representation are central to my work as four of my characters experience internment in labour or concentration camps. Memory, trauma, representation and history are the 4 points of my workday compass, but there are other trails leading in other directions I have had to follow as well. Writing fiction which examines some of the most horrific events of recent times means that the question of the value and function of the novel are never far from my mind -usually in the form of a huge screaming neon sign the size of a Times Square billboard. So I would be interested in people's comments, theories, philosophies on that old, but very necessary chestnut - what is fiction for?