An academic book I wrote a chapter for just got published! The book is called Posthumanism in Young Adult Fiction: Finding Humanity in a Posthuman World and is edited by Anita Tarr and Donna R. White. My chapter “The Adolescent Posthuman: Re-imagining Body Image and Identity in Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and Julianna Baggott’s Pure” was first accepted for publication back in July 2014, while I was still completing my PhD. It’s definitely been a long, long process! A friend who’s completing her PhD has already referred to my chapter in her thesis, and if that isn’t the biggest compliment someone can give, I don’t know what is.
The themes of this collection are on a topic I branched away from just after I submitted the abstract in 2014, but it was fun to write and the publication process was an interesting one. While my passion will always be in creative writing, I’ve kept a toe dipped into the pool of academia since completing my PhD. Besides this chapter, I’m presenting a paper in July at the Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR) conference in Wellington, NZ, entitled “Harry Potter versus Morrigan Crow: the changing representations of education in children’s fantasy”, which has been fun to write. For anyone else who’s going to the ACLAR conference, I hope to meet you there!
It’s good to keep challenging myself in the critical arena of literature as I find it then reflects in my own creative writing, much like reading fiction. There are so many great discussions happening in academia that can inspire a thousand books!