Dr Jo Parnell

Dr Jo Parnell is a reviewer, essayist, memoirist, conference speaker, editor, and a practitioner and analyst of creative non-fiction, especially the literary docu-memoir. She has a particular interest in the work of Helen Garner, Tony Parker, Sheila Stewart, and Catherine Cookson. As a writer of literary docu-memoir, Jo has evolved a new way of writing lives, adapted from the form pioneered by Tony Parker.

Emeritus Professor Hugh Craig, formerly her principal supervisor, is her mentor. Her work has been published nationally, and internationally. One of her works, “Translating and conveying the damaging childhood in Our Kate” was requested for inclusion as a central chapter in Catherine Cookson Country: On the Borders of Legitimacy, Fiction and History(Ashgate 2012), a world-first text book on Catherine Cookson, edited by Julie Anne Taddeo. Three of Dr Parnell's most recent books are international edited collections, all of which are cross-disciplinary works: Representations of the Mother-in-Law: in literature, film, drama, and television (Lexington Books 2018); New and Experimental Approaches to Writing Lives (Macmillan International Higher Education--Red Globe Press imprint 2019); The Bride in the Cultural Imagination: Screen, Stage, and Literary Productions (Lexington Books 2020). Currently, among other projects, Jo Parnell is working on a sole-authored book of creative short stories based on real-life experiences, as well as a further three international edited collections; these are: Taking Control: the use of critical and creative digital tools in the now and beyond,  in  screen, literature, graphic texts, and visual culture narratives (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2022/23); Writing Australian History on Screen: cultural, sociological, and historical depths in television and film period dramas "down under," with Julie Anne Taddeo (Lexington Books, forthcoming 2021/22); and Cultural Representations of the Second Wife: Literature, Stage, and Screen (Lexington Books, forthcoming 2021/22).

Research Expertise
The main focus of my research, literary docu-memoir, is an unusual and little known form which involves the creative nonfiction writer audio-taping ordinary people for their life experience and thoughts and feelings, as the resource material for a literary production. I look at how other creative nonfiction writers have used the form, and how the form blurs the boundaries between life writing and life narrative and straddles literary memoir and literary documentary. This specialised form demands that the writer be as non-judgemental of the subject as possible, and to write with reflection and understanding. This involves the ability of the writer to feel empathy with the subject and convey that in writing in order to present and share with the reader another person’s feelings as if they are her or his own. The writer of literary docu-memoir does not tell or explain the subject’s story but creates a literary space in which the subject speaks for her- or him- self. The memoir component is primarily that of the subject. The documentary component can take the form of illustrations and photographs inserted by the writer to lend credence to the text. The documentary component can also be factual elements which the subject mentions naturally in conversation about her or his experience, and which produces a documentary-type effect in the narrative on a personal and affective level. Follow my blog: Words for Sam