The in / completeness of human experience

In April 2020, amidst the global pandemic of Covid-19, the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), the peak academic body representing the discipline of Creative Writing in Australasia, sent a call for contributions to a Special Issue of TEXT—Journal of Writing and Writing Courses. We invited creative responses to the current health crisis and its impacts—an opportunity to come together as writers. This Special Issue is testament to our deep interest in capturing a composite picture of what people are writing about now. Writers were asked to send short-short fiction, “sudden” fiction, “sketchy” stories, creative nonfiction, poetry, short pithy scripts, and hybrid forms. As experienced writers, and both experienced and emerging researchers, those invited to respond possess a constitution that generates in us tendencies to respond to the current climate in both tacit and reflective ways—drawing on the skills and capacities that make us writer-researchers. And while the works may not necessarily be products of an established research project, they are unquestionably products of research-minded writers. Each work included in this Special Issue incorporates an element, at least, of the writer’s research orientation, and an engagement, as a creative-practice researcher, with a current and urgent demand.