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Professor Kari Gislason
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Creative Arts,
Creative Writing
Biography
BackgroundDr Kári Gíslason is Professor of Creative Writing and Literary Studies in the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT. He has previously taught in Writing and Literary Studies at the University of Tübingen, the University of Queensland, the University of Iceland, and Bond University, as well as at secondary schools in Iceland. His PhD, a study of authorship in medieval Iceland, was completed at the University of Queensland in 2003, and was included on the UQ Dean's Commendation List for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Theses. During his doctoral studies, he also worked as a translator and, in a research capacity, on projects that investigated the teaching of Shakespeare in Australian universities, environmental law, and practices of translation and language training. Professor Gíslason has published internationally on a range of topics in literature and cultural studies, as well as creative writing pieces in the local and national press, and in Australian literary journals. In 2011, he published a family memoir The Promise of Iceland, and in 2015 the novel The Ash Burner. In 2017, he co-authored (with Richard Fidler) Saga Land: The Island of Stories at the Edge of the World, a work that emerged from a ABC Radio National documentary series, and in 2022 he published the historical novel The Sorrow Stone. He has delivered numerous papers in the areas of authorship studies, narrative theory, and creative writing scholarship. He is currently the unit coordinator of:
- KWB116 Creative Non-fiction
- KWB214 The Artful Life: From Memoir to Fiction
- KWB117 Australian Voices
Personal details
Positions
- Professor
Faculty of Creative Industries, Education & Social Justice,
School of Creative Arts,
Creative Writing
Research field
Performing arts, Literary studies, Other language, communication and culture
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2020
Qualifications
- PhD (University of Queensland)
- Master of Arts (University of Queensland)
- Bachelor of Arts with Honour Class 1 (University of Queensland)
- Bachelor of Laws (University of Queensland)
Publications
- Fidler, R. & Gislason, K. (2017). Saga land: The island of stories at the edge of the world [Textual]. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/225570
- Gislason, K., Fidler, R., Fieldhouse, S. & Rayner, M. (2016). Saga land: Richard Fidler and Kari Gislason in Iceland. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/93910
- Gislason, K., (2015). Reading Australia: 'Romulus, My Father' by Raimond Gaita. Australian Book Review [Artefact]. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/225513
- Gislason, K., (2015). The ash burner [Textual]. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/225459
- Carson, S., Hawkes, L., Gislason, K. & Martin, S. (2013). Practices of literary tourism: An Australian case study. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 7(1), 42–50. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/218602
- Gislason, K., (2012). Travel writing. In D. Morley & P. Neilsen (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing (pp. 87–101). Cambridge University Press. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/54790
- Gislason, K., (2011). The promise of Iceland [Textual]. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/54776
- Gislason, K., (2009). Within and without family in the Icelandic sagas. Parergon, 26(1), 13–33. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/45506
- Gislason, K., (2006). Reading for saga authorship: a character-based approach. Gripla, 2006, 125–152. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/44574
- Gislason, K., (2005). The Icelander abroad: Hjalti Skeggjason's Swedish mission. In G. Barnes & G. Singleton (Eds.), Travel and travellers from Bede to Dampier (pp. 67–77). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/54794
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Kari, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Filter publications:
A complete list of publications is available at: https://www.qut.edu.au/about/our-people/academic-profiles/k.gislason
Supervision
Current supervisions
- Belief in Creative Non-Fiction in the Post-Truth Era
PhD, Associate Supervisor
Other supervisors: Professor Bree Hadley - How can multimodal creative practice communicate the experience of EMDR therapy?
MPhil, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Courtney Pedersen - Structured Chaos: Dissonant Music and Narrative Time
MPhil, Principal Supervisor
Other supervisors: Dr Rohan Wilson
Completed supervisions (Doctorate)
- The Intake Room: The Rise of Identity Literature: Identity Discourse, Australian Poetry, and the Shift in Reception of Literary Texts (2026)
- The Liminal Lens: Contesting Essentialist Representations of Japan Through Expatriate Memoir (2026)
- Hospital Stories: Narrative Medicine, Creative Nonfiction, and the Ethics and Limits of Writing about Patients (2025)
- Belonging at the End of the World: (Re)imagining Paradise through Narratives of Low-income Locals on the Gold Coast (2020)
Completed supervisions (Masters by Research)
- Consonance and dissonance: Musical specialist language and characters in fiction (2023)
- Chiasmus as Constraint: Negotiating with Narrative Form in Contemporary Creative Writing Practice (2022)
- Journeys in Kitchens: Travel Writing and the Possibilities of New Encounters with Women, Food and Domestic Life in Islamic Cultures (2019)
- Thought, Action; Impact: Modes of Presentation to Enable an Immersive Reader-Response (2019)
- The Use of Irritation in Mood and Character Development in Creative Writing (2018)
- DOUBLE HELIX Mapping the generic ethical codes of creative nonfiction writing and medical writing "THIS WILL PROBABLY HURT" Stories from my student nurse training (2017)
The supervisions listed above are only a selection.