Home > HCAS > HCAS_PUBS > HCAS_JOURNALS > TQR Home > TQR > Vol. 30 > No. 2 (2025)

Writing Research into Fiction

Jessica Smartt Gullion, Texas Woman’s UniversityFollow

Abstract

Qualitative methodology has evolved to include all sorts of epistemologies that positivism excludes. We have seen an increase in the use of arts-based methods as ways of gathering, analyzing, and writing research. This includes the genre of fiction as research. In fiction as research, the researcher gathers and analyzes data, but writes the findings from them to the audience as fiction. This is often done to expand the audience of readers and include people who might not normally read (or have access to) research reports. In this article, I discuss my own use of social fiction and highlight the contributions of Patricia Leavy to the field.

Keywords

social fiction, Patricia Leavy, arts-based research methods, writing, fiction, publishing, research design, qualitative research

Author Bio(s)

Jessica Smartt Gullion, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Texas Woman’s University. She has published ten books, primarily on qualitative methodology, including Qualitative Methods in Health and Illness, Researching With: A Decolonizing Approach to Community-Based Action Research, Diffractive Ethnography: Social Science in the Ontological Turn, and Writing Ethnography, now in its second edition. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jessica Smartt Gullion at gullion@twu.edu