Jamie Walker

I am a Creative Writing PhD candidate and a writer. My research interests include: American Gothic and Horror fiction, memoir and autobiography, and all forms of speculative fiction; genre theory; the uncanny; the intersection between American cultural attitudes towards childhood, and its depiciton in post-20th century works of American Gothic and Horror fiction; trauma writing; visual poetics within narrrative forms; creative nonfiction, and the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction. My thesis, The Scratch on the Door: Memoir, Autistic Trauma, and the Object of Horror, investigates personal, autistic experiences of childhood trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Informed by psychology and literary theory, I explore the subject through a piece of creative work and critical reflection. The resulting, creative work is a memoir. The surreal narrative uses visual poetic devices as well as the formal and generic conventions of American Gothic and Horror fiction, in particular having a supernatural narrative with an Object of Horror, to depict an autistic child’s experiences of psychological trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.