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Creative non-fiction is a fictocritical , genre-defying form that shifts ‘ between fragmentary modes of experimentation , from essayistic to poetic to theoretical , employing autobiographical elements of story-telling techniques ’ 12 , with many proponents using it in opposition to standardised forms of academic writing . Creative non-fiction is not formless or unstructured , but at the same time it challenges neoliberal assumptions of what academic writing is and should do . In my own writing , I use it as a method of introducing a voice that is both creative and investigative , which reflects on events and history to critically engage with the environment in ways that are unexpected to both researcher and reader . Detailed below is an example of my engagement with this form . My intention in this piece was not to create a point-evidence-explain structure , but to contextualise two situations that resonate together for me , and leave the reader haunted by them . The piece documents the first leg of a psychogeographic journey in Stoke-on-Trent in early 2018 . It re-covers the steps of an EDL march that took place there 8 years previously .
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Fig . 1 Hanley Bus Station ( Photograph by Stephen Seabridge , 2018 ). 13
12
Paul Dawson , Creative Writing and the New Humanities ( London : Routledge , 2005 ), 167 .
13
Stephen Seabridge , Hanley Bus Station , 2018 , figure 1 .