Ethics, Autoethnography, the Academy and the World of Writers

T: This Australian-based paper offers a subjective academic narrative on the methodology of autoethnography as it is used and understood by both learners enrolled in creative writing higher education degrees and by novelists who draw on real-life experience and personages in their work in the quest for verisimilitude. Closely considering cases of writing in both ivory tower and real-world contexts, the qualitative and reflection-based study reveals that once writers move from the academy to the world of publishing, they are better able to write from experience, and can do so as long as they adhere to the 'ethics of care' that characterise their profession. Trained as autoethnographers to draw fictions from life experiences through methodological autoethnography, real world writers continue to follow the ethical tenets of consent, consultation and present and future vulnerability.