LIRIC Journal – Reviewer Guidance and Publication Considerations Lapidus International Research and Innovation Community (LIRIC) Journal is an international, peer-reviewed, and cross-disciplinary journal dedicated to advancing research, scholarship, and reflective inquiry within the field of writing for wellbeing and creative writing for therapeutic purposes (CWTP). LIRIC welcomes submissions that contribute meaningfully to professional practice, theory, research, reflexive inquiry, and creative or arts-based methodologies. The journal values diverse methodological, philosophical, and cultural perspectives, particularly those that promote ethical, inclusive, and critically reflective engagement within the field. Editors and peer reviewers consider whether a manuscript demonstrates sufficient scholarly quality, originality, ethical awareness, reflexivity, and relevance to the readership and aims of the journal. Publication decisions are based not only on academic rigour, but also on the contribution the work makes to dialogue, professional practice, and the broader writing for wellbeing community. When reviewing submissions, editors and reviewers are invited to consider the following criteria. Reviewer Considerations Relevance and Contribution to the Field Will the submission be of interest to Lapidus members and the wider readership of LIRIC? Does the paper contribute meaningfully to the field of writing for wellbeing, creative writing for therapeutic purposes, or related professional practice? Has the author clearly articulated the relevance and implications of the work for practice, research, education, or professional development? Does the paper offer perspectives, insights, methodologies, or discussions that are original, thought-provoking, innovative, or particularly significant? Research and Methodological Rigour Has the research methodology, theoretical framework, or reflective approach been clearly described and appropriately applied? Where relevant, has the author critically engaged with methodological strengths, limitations, and reflexive considerations? Does the manuscript demonstrate critical thinking, intellectual rigour, trustworthiness, and reflexivity? Has the author engaged appropriately with relevant literature, debates, or differing perspectives within the field? Ethical Awareness and Professional Sensitivity Does the manuscript demonstrate ethical awareness and sensitivity in relation to the topic, participants, context, and presentation of material? Where applicable, have ethical approval, informed consent, confidentiality, and safeguarding considerations been appropriately addressed and acknowledged? Has the author demonstrated care, respect, and professional integrity throughout the work? Structure, Clarity, and Writing Quality Is the writing clear, coherent, and accessible to readers? Is the paper logically organised with appropriate headings and subheadings? Does the manuscript present a coherent and engaging narrative, argument, or line of inquiry? Is specialist terminology or theoretical language explained clearly where necessary? Would further editing improve clarity, readability, or flow? Referencing and Academic Presentation Have APA referencing and formatting guidelines been followed consistently and accurately? Has the author appropriately acknowledged sources and avoided plagiarism to the best of the reviewer’s knowledge? Are citations, references, and quotations presented accurately and professionally? Review Ethos LIRIC encourages a supportive, constructive, and developmental review culture. Reviewers are asked to provide balanced feedback that recognises the strengths of a submission while offering thoughtful recommendations for improvement where appropriate. As an interdisciplinary and inclusive journal, LIRIC particularly values openness to diverse voices, creative methodologies, lived experience, and emerging scholars within the field.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tim Buescher (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Book Review: Epistemic Justice and the Postcolonial University
Copyright (c) 2026 Lucy Windridge-Floris, Buki Akilapa (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
One aspect of creative writing not well understood or researched is how associations from the unconscious can bring spontaneous and unexpected insights and connections to the writer’s awareness. This feature promotes wellbeing by providing motivation to alter harmful attitudes and behaviour. From linguistics comes the term mirativity, which expresses a speaker’s surprise at the discovery of new information. Mirativity can also apply to the creative writing process, when unforeseen and beneficial material appears from idiosyncratic associations, and therefore cannot be reproduced by AI. Creative writing is a low-cost, inbuilt resource to help people manage their lives and circumstances, to bear witness to influence policy change, and to improve self-care.
Copyright (c) 2026 Dawn Garisch (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Subtle and Significant Shifts—The Transformational Effects of Therapeutic Writing
This paper looks at the transformational effects of therapeutic creative writing by re-examining aspects of previous research titled The Great Unreality – An Autoethnographic Exploration of Depersonalisation in Adolescent Journals Using Therapeutic Writing. The original research identified both a past psychiatric disorder of depersonalisation–derealisation and a lifelong recovery process. Therapeutic insights brought about significant shifts of perspective using creative writing coupled with compassion and underpinned with psychological understanding informed by the MSc course Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. This paper revisits some of these key moments of the research. Whilst acknowledging the risks of self-research, I suggest therapeutic writing may enhance self-discovery and self-compassion, generating a fresh narrative for a troubled past.
creative writing for therapeutic purposes
Copyright (c) 2026 Elisabeth Winkler (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This article uses autoethnography to explore how identity was shaped and gradually re-authored of through experiences of girlhood, migration, grief, and reflective writing. Drawing on journals, poetry, and reflective rereading, I examine how Yoruba and Christian-inflected patriarchal expectations, migration from Nigeria to England, institutional misrecognition, and bereavement shaped my sense of self. I use the term soul work to describe the reflective and emotional labour through which writing became a means of examining inherited narratives of respect, silence, duty, and worth. The article argues that self-compassion and self-recognition did not emerge separately from writing, but developed through repeated acts of journalling, poetic reworking, and reflective engagement with personal experience. In doing so, the article demonstrates how creative and reflective writing can function as a method of inquiry, healing, and self-authorship within creative writing for therapeutic purposes (CWTP).
Copyright (c) 2026 Buki Akilapa (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Exploring the Writing for Wellbeing Landscape
When Kate McBarron came across the concept of writing for wellbeing in 2012, the discovery felt like stepping into a new world—into a 'rich landscape'. Here, via an exploration of the field with the help of artificial intelligence, she has brought this landscape to life. The aim was to consolidate her knowledge as well as to illustrate the breadth and depth of the writing for wellbeing field. Embedded within her review are a host of natural-world metaphors, which provide a springboard for showcasing examples of the evidence that has shaped her view of the field. Evidence is explored across five key areas: physical health, mental health, self development, community, and work. Areas for future research are also highlighted.
Copyright (c) 2026 Kate McBarron (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
In this paper I explore and engage with eleven research conversations that I shared in and facilitated in 2022 in the UK. These conversations were created under the auspices of a narrative inquiry to explore creative writing for therapeutic purposes (CWTP) practitioners’ and students’ relationship with research. I was full of curiosity about the role of research in CWTP and how practitioners and students felt about research. This paper presents what I heard in the eleven conversations and where these led me. What emerged from the conversations about the weightiness and constriction of traditional, mainstream research. Then how people were finding their way to something more akin to play and ‘writing from the heart’ as their practice. And how I was transformed. This is not a traditional research paper. I have chosen to abandon my usual ways of writing research in order to present something that follows a line of thought, a curiosity. The paper shows how my knowledge developed through attending to the voices met with along the way and how I arrived at a place of new insight into research as potentially about (moving in) connection (with others). This paper contributes to emerging conversations in CWTP by proposing that, following Ingold, research in this field can be reimagined as a relational, dialogic, and process-led practice. Drawing on narrative inquiry and eleven research conversations, it challenges dominant, product-driven models of research and highlights alternative ways of knowing grounded in connection, reflexivity, and ‘writing from the heart’.
Copyright (c) 2026 Sue Walters (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This critical reflective paper discusses development of a health research methodology focused on creative writing in collaboration with Home-Start Essex, a charity supporting young families. It explores how a process of embedding a creative writer within an organisation over an extended period might progress a new model of practice built on a two-way exchange of skills and knowledge between practitioner and client group. A series of interconnecting creative writing workshops for Home-Start’s Thriving Communities project in South Essex was created and delivered with the aim of improving family mental health and wellbeing. These House of Dreams and Memories workshops were inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s work The Poetics of Space. Participants in the workshops were encouraged to build their own House of Dreams and Memories, an imaginary space of nurture and renewal inspired by Bachelard’s theory of poetics. The creative writing sessions were bookended by wellbeing sessions delivered by the Wellbeing Co-ordinator for Home-Start Essex. This joint delivery model offers opportunities to enhance outcomes for both creative practitioner and the commissioning body, and provides an example of best practice with a potential for scaling up. The article reflects on the challenges faced in setting up such a collaboration and concludes with a discussion of ways to progress the model as both a creative arts opportunity and evaluation tool.
Copyright (c) 2026 Penny Simpson (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A Story of a Marriage Through Dementia and Beyond
Copyright (c) 2023 Dr Kim Etherington (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Insight into the Process of Writing the Same Memoir in Two Languages
The experience of a civil war is always traumatic, as is refugee status and settling down in a new environment. Writing about such traumatic events takes a great deal of processing and a lot of time. Almost 30 years after the events, I set out to write a memoir describing them. One surprising fact was that the language in which the book was first rendered was English. Although I have near native proficiency in English, it is not my mother tongue. It was only after the book was completed that the idea of translating/rewriting it in Serbo-Croat started to emerge. The link between language and identity is well-known, but some aspects might seem rather strange. In this essay, I analyse various psychological processes that accompanied my writing. I note the differences in emotions and reactions, as well as something I would refer to as a change of personality traits, depending on the language I was writing in. Completing both versions of the memoir helped me process my trauma and bring together previously fragmented pieces of self.
Copyright (c) 2023 Dr Jasna Levinger-Goy (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Unpicking Horrifying Moments of Uneasy Silence
This duo-autoethnography explores responses to a recurring hiatus in conversations when I, a white English woman, state that I am married to a man with an Arabic name. Together, my husband and I have used practices of creative writing for therapeutic purposes to examine our personal encounters with Islamophobia in the UK. This article evidences the power of co-inquiry, demonstrates the necessity of flexible responses to written expressions of trauma; and reveals outrage and silence as distinctive ways of coping with discrimination. It shows an incongruence in the binary which presupposes white non-Muslim men to be superior in their ability to respect women and highlights the need to dismantle white supremacy in trustworthy environments to avoid unhelpful fight-or-flight responses. Personal responses have been written, acknowledging structures of wider political, social, and historical contexts shaping social conditions.
Copyright (c) 2023 Dr Lucy Windridge-Floris, Shaamil Windridge-Floris (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2023 Tim Buescher (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This qualitative inquiry is the account of one academic who used poetry and art as reflective mediums while applying for tenure and promotion in a university environment. The autobiographical framework guiding this work adds a rich layer of understanding to the lived experience of applying for tenure as an academic in a tenure-track role. This paper suggests that using arts-based mediums as reflective tools can ease the journey to tenure. Through thematic analysis of the poetry and art created, three findings emerged: f irst, the importance of considering the creation of poetry and art as mediums to express and explore the reflective practitioner’s role in the academy; second, the importance of creating writing spaces and protecting time needed to engage and critically analyze our works; finally, for each of us as practitioners to engage in self-care activities while inquiring into tensions within our work practices.
Copyright (c) 2023 Janet Kuhnke (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
In this study, I selected a sample of my own historic diary entries (ages 14–43) and wrote into them reflectively and creatively. This culminated in a script-in-hand performance shared with a closed audience in the landscape. My curiosity was how this process might be therapeutic to me and possibly others. I found therapeutic value in re-storying, becoming more reconciled to life events, improved self-image, confidence, and integration of parts of self. There were impacts on the audience, and findings relate to how sharing life story enables two-way connection, being heard, and seeing oneself in others. There are implications for ongoing work creatively and therapeutically engaging with diaries, especially regarding life review and end of life.
Copyright (c) 2023 Emma Decent (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2022 Dr Reinekke Lengelle (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Photopoetry is an art form that involves the interaction between photography and poetry to produce a new artefact—the photopoem. This article presents two photopoems based on a collaboration between Esther Wafula, a poet, and Phyllis Muthoni, a photographer. In dialogue, the poet and the photographer respond to questions suggested by the LIRIC Journaleditor about how their collaboration began, what inspires their work, and what photography and poetry uniquely bring to the collaboration. The poet also describes the organic process she uses to create photopoems. The implications of photopoetry as a form of creative expression are briefly discussed and an invitation made to explore its potential as a possible tool for research for the self and creative writing for therapeutic purposes.
Copyright (c) 2022 Esther Wafula, Phyllis Muthoni (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Poetry Therapy, Journaling, and Mindfulness
This retrospective case study presents the course of a 16-month treatment of an adult female client diagnosed with severe anxiety. The treatment protocol incorporated poetry therapy, journal therapy, training in mindfulness meditation techniques, and cognitive therapy. Using the Beck Anxiety Inventory for scaling, the client reduced her subjective experience of anxiety symptoms from the baseline score of 34 to 9 after 15 months and to a score of 4 at the end of treatment. The author’s university Institutional Review Board approved the study and the client released the content of her journals for use in this article. Excerpts from her journal entries highlight the course of her movement from severe anxiety to remission.
Copyright (c) 2022 Dr Mari Alschuler (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
In this paper, I share the findings of a heuristically informed self-study exploring the potential of creative dialogues with characters from Homer’s Odyssey to support the development of a healthy narrative identity in late adulthood. Feeling stuck in a persistent dysfunctional narrative, I was interested in trying to access the wisdom of the mundus imaginalis, described as a third realm between mind and matter with its own non-literal ontological reality, to find new possibilities. The study also drew on dialogical self theory (DST), which suggests that our narrative identity is constituted through ongoing ‘conversations’ between the multiple internal and external voices of a decentred self, rather than the unfolding of a single story. I devised methods (including collage, poetry, and creative dialogues) with the intention of enabling autonomous mythological characters to advise and guide me ‘in their own voices.’ The cumulative effect of these imaginal encounters was both profound and beneficial, helping me shift my narrative identity from that of a life mired in loss and grief to one characterised by gratitude and acceptance. I conclude that creative writing for therapeutic purposes practitioners could use similar methods to benefit others, with the caveat that they require considerable time and commitment.
Copyright (c) 2022 Geoff Mead (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Immobilities of Gender-based Violence in Lockdown
This article reports on a UK-wide, transdisciplinary project between creative writers and social scientists that was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), exploring how storytelling workshops with women who experienced gender-based violence (GBV) in lockdown could be used to inform and change social and legal policies. The article is split into two sections: in the first, we give an outline of the project and how the creative workshops were devised, and in the second, we adopt a trioethnographic stance, enabling us to contextualise and present our dialogues that 1) reflect on our lived experience of devising the workshops and 2) draw on interview data with writers and artists who co-led the project to make recommendations for workshop facilitation with people who have experienced GBV.
Copyright (c) 2022 Mel Parks, Jessica Moriarty, Hannah Vincent (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This essay looks at medical students’ poetry on a curated website and design of a course for medical undergraduates called Poetry of Medicine. A close reading of poetry and commentaries on the website outofourheads.net informed aims and design of the course, which had three strands: 1) study of poetics and analysis of poems; 2) practical exploration of applications of poetry within medicine; 3) writing poems and reflecting on them, and reading work by a range of poets. This essay focuses on the third of these. Recurring themes in students’ writing and reflections suggested that writing poetry can offer an outlet for expression and a way of processing personal and professional experiences that may be helpful as a supportive resource for students
Copyright (c) 2022 Fiona Hamilton (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A regenring of a research project dissertation that explores the experience of women survivors of domestic abuse who had practised creative writing for therapeutic purposes—reading their written work at a spoken word poetry event and asking, What can we do as writing practitioners to support them?
Copyright (c) 2022 Melanie Perry (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2022 Dr Jeannie Wright, Dr Poonam Madar (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2022 Aathira Nair (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2022 Dr Katrin Den Elzen (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Lowen Clarke presents a new therapeutic aide based on a phenomenon that complements the basics of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing). The phenomenon has been made into a useful tool as a picture book. This combination has calming results for clients with PTSD(post-traumatic stress disorder) and dissociation. Lowen introduces the phenomenon, the book, and the lived experience that underlay its discovery and publication.
Copyright (c) 2022 Lowen Clarke (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This paper explores themes of the liberatory in therapeutic writing. It includes a narrative account of a series of difficult encounters at a writing for wellbeing conference and then reflects on this through an ‘otherwise’ lens. By engaging Saidiya Hartman’s term otherwise, the author highlights possibilities for practice in the field as it navigates the unbearable encounter of race. Terms such as therapeutic writing, creative writing for therapeutic purposes (CWTP), and writing for wellbeing, which do not explicitly reference the liberatory, or processes of ‘getting free’, do not account for the experience, knowledge, and possibilities of Black life. Writing OtherWise is proposed as a mode of practice that creates capacity for being with the difficult encounter and expanded possibilities for writing as personal and collective freedom-making.
Copyright (c) 2022 Foluke Taylor (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Creating Space to Write and Grow Spiritually
This paper explores the spiritual health of an individual living recovered from an eating disorder. The goal is to advance understanding of diary writing as a contribution to healing and wellbeing. Frameworks guiding this study include autobiographical/performative and document analysis approaches. Data focused on spirituality was collected from diaries, journals, and art created, each critically analyzed for leading themes. Themes emerging from the inquiry included individual courage and connectedness, the role of diary writing and gaining self-knowledge, and maintaining daily spirituality in recovery.
Copyright (c) 2022 Janet Kuhnke (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
This paper is an account of a self-heuristic enquiry into the experience of using artwork and reflective creative writing to map fragments of my dreams over a ten-week period in early 2020. During this time, I generated a series of dream maps and associated reflective creative writing, from which emerged themes of orientation, perspective, journey, beasts, and body. As a cross-art exercise in transforming ephemeral dream fragments into concrete maps, poems, dialogues, and other written forms, it was an extended journaling of personal metaphor that was both playful and deeply informative. I argue that the novel techniques I used in this project contributed to integration of my self and could similarly benefit others. My intention for this paper is to share personal discoveries I made through the work, and to offer practical guidance—in the form of a nine-step procedure—to other practitioners who would like to try this approach.
Copyright (c) 2022 Rachel Godfrey (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
After presenting several theories and dimensions of loneliness, this article sets forth specific ways in which the practice of poetry therapy, which involves facilitating expressive writing and sharing of personal responses to select poems, can not only offer relief to those experiencing loneliness, but also foster empathy toward individuals suffering from a sense of isolation. Addressed to professionals engaged in helping individuals in clinical and non-clinical settings, this article draws from the author’s experiences as a certified poetry therapist and psychologist working in clinical and community-based educational settings and also from the author’s workshop presented at the 2019 Creative Bridges Conference.Poetic materials, along with creative writing and group discussion prompts, are referenced as apt choices for addressing loneliness arising from life transitions involving loss, lack of belonging due to social discrimination, communication breakdown, and chronic dysfunctional patterns. A final section of this article briefly addresses the way in which poetic expression can enhance appreciation for solitude as a healthful state differing from loneliness.
Copyright (c) 2022 Dr Geri Giebel Chavis (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
A growing number of studies on the effects of expressive writing demonstrate an improvement in the long-term physical health of participating writers. However, the findings for psychological and emotional health benefits are not as robust or consistent. With reference to the transformation-through-writing model, I take an autoethnographic approach to explore how creative writing supported an increasing level of self-awareness about my own experience of childhood sexual abuse. I attribute the positive effect writing had on my psychological and emotional health to a combination of concepts discussed in the literature on expressive writing, namely emotional catharsis and cognitive processing. From this analysis, I suggest that creative writing may be an effective healing model for adult survivors of childhood trauma if the expressive writing paradigm is adjusted to align with individual stages of healing, recognize the individual’s culture and coping style, and provide sufficient time for the individual to heal through writing.
Copyright (c) 2022 Jennifer Bertrand (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0