Incorporating The Teenage Outsider

This practice-led PhD consists of two parts: Part One is the creative element, the YA novel Eden Summer; Part Two is the contextualising thesis. Eden Summer uses the search for a missing teenage girl to explore themes of female friendship, grief and resilience. The contextualising exegesis examines the process of writing creatively for young adults in this historical moment, exploring what characteristics might define YA literature, and how they affect the process of writing it. The thesis also takes the opportunity to examine some of the discursive activities connected with publication that can be viewed as constituting the creation of the YA author. The introduction establishes the study’s focus on the intersection between CW and YA. Chapter 1.1 interrogates CW theory, placing it in a historical context, while the second part provides an overview and analysis of the contemporary YA literary landscape in which Eden Summer is situated. Chapter 2 introduces the creative methodology for this study, drawing on and extending existing methodologies, and relates it to the work with evidence from the creative journal (extracts from which are supplied in the appendix), blog interviews and manuscript, before going on to analyse the main structural and thematic elements of the work, including experimental first stages, chronology, landscape and literary inheritance. Chapter 3 examines the definitions of YA fiction through this particular process of writing it, including a discussion of the assumptions and limitations of this new theoretical framework. Finally, chapter 3.2 draws on narrative and discursive theory to examine the construction of the YA author. The conclusion tests the significance of these findings in the light of the original aims of the project, its extension of and contribution to current theorisation of the creative writing process and the relationship between critical and creative work. This thesis demonstrates the complex ways in which the defining characteristics of YA literature shape the writing of it at all stages. Ultimately, the process of becoming the YA author is shown to be aligned with the condition of young adulthood itself.