FWA: Ingrid, you are a poet, essayist, travel writer, and your debut fiction, All Her Lives: Nine Stories, is forthcoming in New Zealand this year, and in Australia next year. Having written across genres, what makes writing creative nonfiction a different experience?
IH: I love the exploratory, questioning nature of creative nonfiction – the way that as a writer you can immerse in a topic or an experience, and take your reader with you on your journey of discovery. Writing fiction has taught me a lot about narrative and scene, and I’m grateful for that, but I miss the directness that’s possible with a first-person narrator in creative nonfiction. I like the way you can hold something up for examination in creative nonfiction, present facts in an explicit way, meditate on what you don’t fully understand, and craft a story. There’s a generosity and intimacy to it. There’s also an incredible flexibility about what a work of creative nonfiction can do and contain. My most recent nonfiction book, Where We Swim, is a blend of personal essay, family memoir, travel narrative and story of mid-life and climate change. And it’s structured around a series of swims.
I also value the wide readership creative nonfiction attracts. It’s a public-facing genre, engaging in public conversations.
FWA: After undertaking your PhD at Princeton, and having taught creative writing in an academic context for more than a decade, what is it that draws you to teaching a practice-led program like Writing a Creative Nonfiction Book? What different skills and approaches to writing might students gain from studying at the Faber Academy?
IH: For me, it’s not an either/or: both kinds of courses have important roles in developing writers and readers. In terms of the Faber approach, I guess I’d say that all the talking and complex understanding in the world will only get us so far as writers: at a certain point, the making is where the essential work, and joy, and discovery lies. Having a tools-based, workshop model, gives students the opportunity to experience what it is like to be a working writer, and to really focus on developing their own craft. And having a community of writers can be invaluable to this. We will absolutely be reading together, but I’m excited about working with writers on a course in which their own book is at the centre of everything.
FWA: What are you most looking forward to in this course?
IH: It’s going to be great to work with a single group across a whole year. I love the way a group dynamic develops, and seeing writers learn to trust each other as peers. I’ve never got to work with a one set of writers for such a sustained period before.
That fact that the course is being run online also offers opportunities. In my experience, online classes can allow a more diverse range of writers to participate – people whose family, work, location or life situations might not allow them to attend an in-person class in a major centre. This makes for an interesting classroom, often with a great deal of intimacy and exchange. For all of us – teachers and participants – there’s also a bit to be said for being able to log-in from anywhere. Personally, I like not being fully anchored in place. It’s also going to be fun curating the set of guests who will join us.
FWA: Our scholarship applications are currently open for Writing a Creative Nonfiction Book. What makes for a strong application and what are hoping to discover amongst the candidates?
IH: A great idea is good, but for me the writing sample is the most important thing. It’s there you can see whether someone has a feel for language and story, and the open curiosity required for crafting nonfiction. Each person’s chosen project will become important during the year, but writing is the tool needed to build it. Demonstrating a sense of what makes a good, achievable idea for a book is more important at this stage than having exactly the right idea all worked out. Not that having a great idea, and great writing will do anyone’s application any harm.
FWA: Are there any creative nonfiction books we should be reading right now?
IH: I know there’s a lot happening in the wider world, but I’ll stick to our part of the globe. I think conversations on both sides of the Tasman would be richer if we read each other more. One of my own nonfiction highlights from last year was Richard Flanagan’s Question Seven, which somehow managed to be a memoir of his parents and of Tasmania, and of the atomic bomb, and of climate collapse, and of how history lives within us, and at same time not to be utterly desolate. And released in Aotearoa just this month, there’s a new essay collection, This Compulsion in Us, by Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi-Matakore, Pākehā), which is a brave and beautiful and urgent read about the moment we have arrived at, and how we got here.
Read Ingrid’s piece about Where We Swim for Lithub.
Scholarship applications are currently open for our Writing a Creative Nonfiction Book (Online) with Ingrid Horrocks and Writing a Creative Nonfiction Book (Melbourne) with Deborah Robertson. Applications close on Sunday 2 June.
Writing a Creative Nonfiction Book
with Ingrid Horrocks
ONLINE
Wednesdays 5.30pm – 7.30pm (AEST/AEDT)
19 July 2025 – 27 May 2026