Lauren Hayhurst
Department: Creative Writing
Discipline: English
Project Summary
'Fictive Responsibility'
Developed as part of her PhD, Lauren has created an original action-model called 'fictive responsibility'. It is an approach that writers can choose to apply to improve the accuracy and integrity of their fiction, and also enhance the potential for a positive communal impact on readers. In assessing degrees of 'difference' and confronting unintentional bias, the approach is particularly relevant when creating characters possess identity markers that the writer does not share, such as race, gender, sexuality, class and many more.
Lauren is currently sourcing funding to develop her research in 'fictive responsibility' into a monograph or book. Drawing theoretical and conceptual analysis from cultural studies, ethnography, literary criticism and philosophy, this project is significant to practitioners throughout and beyond Humanities. Case-studies will remain focused on representations of Muslim women in post-9/11 fiction, as detailed in her PhD thesis, but will be expanded to include analysis of fiction by additional authors.
'Words are Morality'
This is an international collaborative project that Lauren has initiated as a result of conversations at the annual Great Writing conference in London. It appeals to writers with interests in the following: cultural appropriation, censorship, the ‘owning’ of subject material, creative writer as social commenter, the importance of ‘truth/accuracy’ in fiction, whether fiction is ‘just made up’, empathy in fiction, and teaching diversity through CW.
The intended outcomes of this project include a collection of essays, creating a podcast with interviews / discussion, collaborating on conference papers, collaborating on creative endeavours - whether short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction - or collaborating on the production of a website / blog.
Please get in touch if you would like to get involved: lahayhurst.writer@gmail.com
Supervisory Team
Dr Sam North, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing
Dr Florian Stadtler, Senior Lecturer in Postcolonial Literature
