Mr Bernard Caleo is a comic book maker and performer, currently working with historian Alex McDermott on a graphic novel, The Devil Collects, set during the decline and fall of 1880s ‘Marvellous Melbourne’. He edited and published the comics anthology Tango, and is co-director of publishing company Twelve Panels Press.

Dr Elizabeth MacFarlane is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Melbourne, where she teaches Theory for Writing, Graphic Narratives and Short Fiction. Her first book, Reading Coetzee, was published in 2013. Elizabeth is co-director of the artists’ residency the Comic Art Workshop, and co-director of publishing company Twelve Panels Press.

Dr Ronnie Scott is Lecturer in Creative Writing at RMIT University and a contributor to many local and international journals, newspapers and magazines. He is the author of Salad Days (Penguin 2014) and founder of The Lifted Brow, an independent literary magazine.

Into the Third Space

Comics and creative writing: Teaching and researching graphic narratives in a creative writing context

This collaborative paper offers three interleaved perspectives on how the medium of comics can change and refresh our perception of narrative making, reading and analysing. Our growing understanding of the unique relationship between space and time in comics, and the defamiliarising effect of visualising narrative conventions in comics, has enriched and altered the way we approach creative writing practice. Our common ground is the creative space of the Graphic Narratives classroom, a place where students and staff encounter images alongside words and experiment with the possibilities and limitations of each.