Intersections of Sport and Society in Creative Writing

This edited collection is positioned at the nexus of sports, society and creative writing. In its explorations of the intersections of sports writing, analysis of literary contributions and examinations of craft, it offers rare consideration of a rich diversity of form in narratives that occur in, and as creative practice. Included in the collection are dynamic academic investigations into football writing and poetry focused on community sporting activities in Afghanistan, to those addressing the intersections of writing and boxing in the reflexive reclamation of the post-trauma self, the absence of women in the rodeo and who and what is represented in our sports shelves. This book breaks new ground in approaches to sport’s role in creative writing and what creative writing can provide in furthering our understanding of sport in society. The works in this edited book draw on a diverse range of methods to interrogate the processes, concepts and liminal spaces through an intersectional array of voices, offering analysis and insight into the application of creative writing knowledge and practice in relation to sport and its impact on wider discipline discussion and research. It is relevant to students and scholars studying and researching creative writing, sports writing, sports studies, cultural studies and sports media studies.

Beyond the Box Score: Reflecting on the Intersections of Sport and Society in Creative Writing.- Sport and Society in Creative Writing: Tradition as Platform of Expectation.- Sportshelfie: Representation in the Sport Section of Australian Bookshops and Libraries.- Don Davies & Hugh Mcilvanney: The Literary Football Reporters who Elevated British Sports Journalism.- Notes on a Scandal: Lemon and Haigh on Australian Cricket’s ‘Sandpapergate’.- Sport and Society in Creative Writing: Place in Sports Fiction.- The Architecture of the Sporting Site in Irish Fiction.- Fury and Failure in Spanish Football Stories of the 1960s.- “Air This Thin Turns Anyone into a Mystic”: Extreme Sport as Metaphor for Societal Disengagement in Steven Heighton’s Every Lost Country (2010).- Sport and Society in Creative Writing: Intersections with Practice.- Write and Write It Again: Using Reflective Autoethnography and Practice-Led Creative Writing to Create New Narratives of Women in Sport.- The Queen and the Clown: A Poetic Inquiry into Women’s Roles In Rodeo.- Gesturing Towards Decolonial Openings: Sports and Poetry.- Reclaiming the Borderlands.- Creative Writing Tools in the Exploration of Intersections of Sport and Society.- Left Write Hook: ‘Boxing with the Boys’ .- Autoethnography and Driving Change.

Lee McGowan is an award-winning researcher, teacher and writer. His primary research interests are in the intersections of sport and creative writing, digital narratives and community engagement. He recently co-authored the monographs, Women’s Football in Oceania (Routledge, 2024) with Kasey Symons and Yoko Kanemeasu and Beach Soccer Histories (Routledge 2024) with Elizabeth Ellison and Michele Lastella. He also published the monograph, Football in Fiction: a History (Routledge 2020), and co-authored the novel-length work of creative non-fiction, Never Say Die: The Hundred Year Overnight Success of Australian Women’s Football, (NewSouth, 2019). His digital narrative research project on the history of women’s football was launched in Queensland Parliament in February 2021. He has published traditional and non-traditional research outputs including journal articles, book chapters, an exhibition, fiction, creative non-fiction and locative literature.  

Kasey Symons is a research fellow in the Sport Innovation Research Group at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. She works across industry partnered research projects that focus on sport and social impact and sports development for governing bodies of sport. Another key research focus is on sport and creative writing, winning the 2018 Lyle Olsen graduate prize at the Sport Literature Association for her published work on gender bias in reading sport fiction written by women. Symons also currently serves as the President of the Sport Literature Association and as the social media editor of its accompanying journal, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. Symons is also an award nominated sportswriter having been nominated in the prestigious Quill awards for excellence in journalism as awarded by the Melbourne Press Club in 2020 for her coverage of women’s sport. Symons has been published in The Guardian, The Irish Times, ABC, The Footy Almanac, in the book BalancingActs: Women in Sport and was co-editor of the book The Women’s Footy Almanac 2018 and co-edited a Special Issue for Text: Journal of Creative Writing on Creative Writing and Sport with Dr Lee McGowan. Kasey is a co-founder and contributor to the women in sport media platform Siren Sport which drives women's sports coverage by diverse voices.