Crossing the shadow line: collaborative creative writing about grief

Abstract

This paper explores the process and outcome of a collaborative life writing project about the death of a parent. Aiming to discover whether collaborative creative nonfiction writing can broaden the representation of experiences of grief and address some of the ethical challenges of writing about vulnerable others, we draw on the scholarship on memoir writing and collaboration and analyse our own process and challenges against this literature. We also identify some of the benefits of collaboratively writing about a recent and personal grief.