Writing is the foundation of academic practice, yet academic writing is seldom explicitly taught. As a result many beginning (and experienced) academics struggle with writing and the difficult emotions, particularly the self-doubt, that writing stirs up. Yet it need not be like this. In this paper, strategies are discussed for attending to the emotions of writing, and developing writing know-how and a stronger sense of identity as a writer. It is argued that addressing all three aspects of writing-emotions, know-how and identity-helps demystify the academic writing process and helps novices on their journey to becoming academic writers.

Hope takes on particular significance at this historical moment, which is defined by the prospect of a climate-altered future. Young people (aged 18–29) from climate action groups in New Zealand were interviewed about how they perceived the future. Deploying a unique combination of conceptual tools and in-depth analysis of a small set of interviews, I explore young New Zealanders’ complex relationships with despair and hope. Paulo Freire claimed his despair as a young man ‘educated’ what emerged as hope. I extend Freire’s concept in two ways by considering: (a) how hope might also ‘educate’ despair and (b) how hope and despair might operate at a collective level, drawing on Rosemary Randall’s psychotherapeutic analysis of societal responses to climate change. Participants identified collective processes as generating hope. Collectivizing hope and despair is important so that young people do not feel climate change is only their burden to solve.

In a broader research project about students’ perceptions of their rights in New Zealand high schools, the first author conducted an interview with a group of students that was noticeably different from her interviews with groups of students at three other high schools. This article was prompted in the first instance by a sense of this ‘noticeably different’ interview being a ‘failure’ because of the limited spoken text elicited. In this article we demonstrate what we can learn from data regarding embodiment, the interview setting, silence, laughter and, in the process, we attempt to practise ‘uncomfortable reflexivities’ advocated by Pillow (2003). We argue that an apparently ‘failed’ interview has a great deal to teach us about the theory and practice of qualitative research and the tenuous nature of the production of knowledge. We finish by identifying how our experience of this ‘failed’ interview informs our current research.

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