Writing Recovery After 3.11

This PhD forms a response to the silences inherent in dominant narratives of disaster, which focus on tragedy, suffering and rescue as the conventional media’s mythologising of disaster unfolds. The project involved longitudinal interviewing with people affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. It resulted in a creative nonfiction manuscript, After 3.11, about experiences of rebuilding in tsunami-inundated areas of Miyagi prefecture, and an exegesis examining the precedents and application of recovery writing in a transcultural context. It demonstrates the value of recovery writing, and how it can be produced in a compelling manner with empathy and respect.