On Becoming a Writer: Collected Stories

Abstract

This project considers the role of the creative writing teacher in the development of the writer’s identity. Drawing from a/r/tography and fiction-based research, this thesis is written in the form of a novel and presented as an exemplar of arts-based qualitative inquiry in educational research. The novel is organized in a series of stories that follow the life of a young woman named Mona and are about the people she meets, the stories she writes, the places she ends up, and who she becomes along the way. This project is informed by its pilot study, which drew from a narrative approach and included semi-structured interviews where participants were asked to share stories on their becoming a writer. The emergent themes from the pilot study fell within one of two opposing categories: The first being factors that prevented one’s sense of becoming and; the second describing factors that facilitated one’s sense of becoming. The findings from the pilot study were then synthesized into literary themes and are presented in the stories, On Becoming a Writer. This project adds to the growing number of fictional texts as educational research and is presented as an alternative to the standard graduate thesis. This approach seeks to engage its readers to participate in the lives of writers and their stories, and may serve as a resource for teachers of aspiring writers.