Beyond epistolarity: the warp, the weft and the loom

Contemporary autoethnographic epistolary creative writing grounded in both feminist and post modernist paradigms gives women a voice. By challenging metanarratives their stories can instigate social, cultural and political action. The PhD by artefact and exegesis explores the formation of a writing subject and argues that the epistolary form and the fictional techniques of novel writing provide a safe space for women to tell their stories. The exegesis analyses the importance of creative epistolarity as a way of knowing the self. It highlights the need to find ways of producing knowledge by rejecting the concept of the detached observer. Personal choices of omissions and additions both academic and creative have had a profound impact on the research, the writing of the exegesis, and the creation of a novel.