Alongside writing novels, Clare has an academic interest in new approaches to authorship and in how past lives are represented in contemporary fiction. She recently completed a doctorate at Coventry University. Her thesis, Co-Authoring With Forgotten Voices, puts forward the idea that when authors sample text from memoirs and weave it into their own fiction, this can be understood as a form of creative collaboration, even when the original author of the life-writing is dead. She argues that this writing method offers a more ethical approach to authoring biographical fiction (or biofiction, as it is sometimes called).
Clare’s thesis combined scholarly argument with creative writing to test her claims. One memoir she drew on extensively was that of Roberta Cowell, the UK’s first widely documented and acknowledged transgender woman. Assigned male at birth, Roberta flew Spitfires for the RAF during the Second World War, and was married with two children before transitioning in the early 1950s.
Clare is currently developing this aspect of her PhD research into a full-length family saga, novelising the lives of Roberta Cowell and her family. To do this, Clare has exclusive access to Cowell’s unpublished memoirs, and the full support of her surviving family.
A chapter showcasing Clare’s practice-led research is due to be published in an academic collection, Haunted Writing (Bloomsbury).
