This thesis considers how creative writing contributes to social recovery and conflict transformation and uses Sierra Leone as a test case. In order to do this, existing theory in relation to the role of the writer and conflict in Africa is examined and a detailed social and literary context outlined. The civil war of 1991-2002 prompted a poetic outpouring amongst new and existing creative writers despite a chronic lack of readership. Interviews with poets based in the capital, Freetown, reveal strong social motivations to write combined with heightened feelings of agency experienced as writers. An examination of texts provides insights into the process of recovery amongst Sierra Leone’s writer-intellectuals. These combined investigations suggest that writing offers an important location for peaceful counter debate and for re-imagining and recreating the nation in the aftermath of war. Poetry texts and discussions amongst writers come to represent a significant discourse for peace. The very practice of writing in a severely impoverished environment offers a radical form of social engagement while writing in English serves as a unifying force. This thesis contributes a new sociological perspective on literature and conflict which may be transferable to other post-war and volatile settings.

"Sayling, Stories from the Mothership" is a collection of ethnographic fictions ? short stories ? adapted from notes, archival materials, and interviews compiled over a year of geographic fieldwork in southwestern Nigeria. Touching on a wide range of themes, from domesticity to internet fraud, the stories explore the interface of occult violence and youth politics in the contemporary period. They are connected through overlapping characters and through their relationships to a central geography: the University of Ibadan (UI), Nigeria?s oldest and most prestigious institute of higher education and the site of origin for the nation?s first campus ?cult?: the Pyrates Confraternity. The collection is, in essence, a character study of Nigerian campus cultism, itself. The stories are organized into three sections that can be mapped onto a ritual landscape: the stages of initiation, participation, and renunciation serve to link diverse voices and life stories. The dissertation is framed by a Preface and Epilogue that explore issues of race, representation, and reflexivity, themes that are important to a project engaging with living memories of contemporary violence. A critical prologue and footnotes throughout serve to connect the creative core of this work to larger academic, literary, and ethnographic contexts. An appendix features maps that highlight spaces and dates important to the stories as well as four original interview ?transcripts?, semi-fictionalised records that provide both additional ethnographic detail and evidence of methodology.