This conference, held in Byron Bay in November 2011 was dedicated to Aunty Ruby: a Bundjalung woman, multi award-winning author, historian and cultural ambassador, who devoted her writing life to ‘edumacating others’ about the lives of Indigenous Australians. Her humanity was all-encompassing and amazing considering the pain and loss that walked side by side with her throughout her life. A prolific writer of nonfiction books, essays, poems and short stories, her contribution to the academy has been recognised by an inaugural Doctorate of Letters from Latrobe University, Victoria and a Doctorate of Letters from Southern Cross University, New South Wales. Ruby’s unique sense of humour, incisive yet compassionate view of the world and the sound of her infectious laughter will be missed by all who knew her.
The refereed proceedings for the 16th annual AAWP conference, Ethical Imaginations: Writing Worlds is a collection of works that have at their heart the ethical considerations writers enter into when representing worlds via the written word. An ethical engagement in literature from both a writer’s and a reader’s perspective has important resonances for the 21st century scholar and this conference explored the multitude of ways in which ethical considerations are intrinsically connected to the practices of writing and reading. Ethical writing and reading practices offer a range of interpretations both culturally and linguistically, but, in the world of writing, ethics is in itself a translatory space, not a given. How do contemporary writers and readers engage with such interpretations and spaces?
The papers in this collection engage with the difficult questions that arise when ethical practices in relation to literature are engaged with. Questions about ethics imply a certain moral obligation to care about the responsibilities we have to others and seek to resolve the nature of these responsibilities and obligations. Under a range of different frameworks the papers in this collection explore and interrogate the ways in which ethical imaginations might seek to represent worlds that offer some alternative solutions to contemporary dilemmas.