Today my guest is Dara Sampson, a Social Worker, Teacher and Researcher. Dara uses fiction, and other literature, in her social work teaching. Her creative and innovative “book club” approach, which she used as her form of action research for her PhD encourages and supports a safe and comfortable context for students to develop empathy, critical thinking and interpersonal skills. Dara’s approach, which she has used in her teaching over a six year period also facilitates students’ exploration of potentially complex and challenging social work theories, ideas and issues including ethics, values, grief and loss, social disadvantage, equity, social justice, race and other discrimination, child protection and issues related to gender. With social work theories spontaneously emerging and safely interwoven into collegial conversations, students are then able to place these conceptual and theoretical ideas into a story, into their own experiences of that story and into their application to real life. Links: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/dara-sampson Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson) http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/book/written-on-the-body/ Levels of Life (Julian Barnes) http://www.julianbarnes.com/books/levels.html Eating Fire (Margaret Atwood) https://www.hachette.com.au/margaret-atwood/eating-fire-selected-poetry-1965-1995 Morning in the Burned House (Margaret Atwood) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/6110/morning-in-the-burned-house-by-margaret-atwood/9780771008337 One Hundred Years of Dirt (Rick Morton) https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/232429785 Blue Nights (Joan Didion) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/40773/blue-nights-by-joan-didion/9780307387387/readers-guide/ H is for Hawke (Helen McDonald) https://www.penguin.com.au/books/h-is-for-hawk-9780099575450 Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Max Porter) https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/literary-fiction/Grief-is-the-Thing-with-Feathers-Max-Porter-9780571327232 Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6125/the-handmaids-tale-by-margaret-atwood/ Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780812550702 A Darker Shade of Magic (V. E. Schwab) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765376466 Dyschronia (Jennifer Mills) http://www.jenjen.com.au/blog/books-dyschronia Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey) https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/fiction/Jasper-Jones-Craig-Silvey-9781760295929