Survivor’s-Eye-View Narratives: Literary Journalism and the Lived Experience of Disaster and Hazelwood: Stories from the 2014 Mine Fire

This thesis investigates the lived experience of an unprecedented disaster – a coal mine fire in Australia’s Latrobe Valley – through the practice and theory of literary journalism. It makes an original contribution to knowledge as the first book-length work of literary journalism about the 2014 Hazelwood mine fire disaster: ‘Hazelwood’. It also contributes original insights about the process of researching and writing disaster literary journalism, focusing on three different kinds of witnessing in ‘Hazelwood’: 1) observing as witnessing; 2) interviewing as witnessing; and 3) reading as witnessing.