Summary

Co-hosts Ian Grosz and Shailini Vinod talk to Jane Hughes about her work on contemporary life writing and memoir. All three are PhD students in creative writing at the University of Aberdeen.

Inspired by her past career as a civil funeral celebrant, Jane was already writing an experimental memoir incorporating elements of fiction and irreverent humour when her mother died, suddenly and unexpectedly, in 2019. Overtaken by events which were not funny at all, Jane continued to write the memoir, incorporating raw details of her personal bereavement experience and collaging a variety of forms of written work into an unusual PhD project that reflects the complexity of grief and the fact that life events can be surprising…

The episode considers the difficulties inherent in writing about personal grief. Jane speaks about her creative process and about using writing to make sense of immediate traumatic events. She also reflects on her use of creative writing as a therapeutic tool, both personally and in her work as a psychotherapist. The episode includes a reading of an excerpt from the memoir, which is a work in progress.

Bio

Jane Hughes is a studying part-time for a PhD in creative writing with the University of Aberdeen. Jane has an MA in Scriptwriting for TV and Radio from the University of Salford and works in Manchester as a psychotherapist. Her essay, ‘Three Wheels on my Wagon’, appears in Essays in Life Writing, published by Routledge in 2022. Recent essays on attachment to place can be found online, published by Elsewhere: A Journal of Place and The Clearing, the online journal created by Little Toller books. Links to her recent published work are available at www.jane-hughes.net