Writing beyond the map: Combining literary journalism and folklore to reveal invisible landscapes of rural Australia

Abstract

This paper proposes Creative Folklore Journalism, a new sub-genre of literary journalism utilising the discipline’s immersion to depict places intertwined with local folklore, creating a captivating narrative revealing the ‘invisible landscape’ through an enriched sense of place. This sub-genre recognises the role folklore has in sustaining meaningfulness in places and advocates for presenting place and folklore together by preserving the ‘geographical root’. This research pioneers Creative Folklore Journalism and explores how it utilises the fundamental devices of literary journalism enhanced with contemporary scholarship and an innovative folklore focus to capture enriched sense of place. An Australian case study examines its first instance of use in documenting the regional non-Indigenous folklore of a rural South Australian town through an immersive narrative that reveals the ‘invisible landscape’ otherwise unknown by outsiders. In conjunction with literary journalism, the research also adopts archival research, literary cartography, and narrative inquiry to thicken the narrative. In doing so, this paper proposes a replicable model using Creative Folklore Journalism that deepens sense of place in immersive storytelling.