NiTRO + Creative Matters

Perspectives on creative arts in higher education

POPULAR GENRE FICTION IN THE CREATIVE WRITING DOCTORATE

  • SARAI MANNOLINI-WINWOOD
COMMERCIALLY VIABLE, ACADEMICALLY FOCUSED, OR BOTH? — Nicola Boyd (2009) declared there is a strong chance of publishing a creative work developed from the creative writing doctorate. But how does this work when the creative output is deeply entwined with academic methodology, especially when the output is popular genre fiction with its own rules and industry expectations for commercial publication?

Jeri Kroll (2018) considers the thesis to speak to different audiences while still operating as a single output of research, thus the thesis is fundamentally designed for academic review. Therefore, can a creative work be a commercially viable product, or is it only an academic output generated through research, and can it be both? Framing this through my own experience writing in the popular fiction genre of urban fantasy, I will discuss the tensions that arose in matching practice-led methodology with industry expectations in a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing.

Keywords Creative writing doctorate; Doctor of Philosophy, Creative Writing; urban fantasy.

DOI 10.65289/creativematters.2025.10.9

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Sarai Mannolini-Winwood (she/her) is a literature enthusiast, writer, and the Creative Director of Pen and Possibility: Creative Writing Studio. She is currently working on a Creative Writing PhD at Deakin University on place-based literature. Her writing has appeared academically in TEXT, Creatio Fantastica, and Axon, professionally in The Artifice, and creatively in Limina, Emerging Possibilities, and Creature.

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