‘Trying to work together’: Writing a collaborative book in COVID-19

We will remember COVID-19 not just for its interruption to our personal and working lives, but also for the way it influenced the writing of the new edition of our textbook Yatdjuligin: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nursing and Midwifery Care. Yatdjuligin is Australia’s first undergraduate-level text about Indigenous health issues written by Indigenous nurses, midwives and health practitioners. We produced the first two editions of the book using a collaborative, relational process informed by Indigenous practices. Producing the third edition of Yatdjuligin during COVID-19 required new ways of working. Instead of meeting face-to-face and spending time together as Indigenous people, we collaborated online in the best ways we could. We collaborated to the fullest extent possible, sharing both the work and our lives. We supported each other when COVID-19 brought new pressures, particularly for members of our collaborative who are also frontline health workers. While our circumstances and communication changed with COVID-19, we maintained our individual identities, subjectivities, experiences, knowledges and truths, and built on our relationality and collegiality to meet our writing goals to deliver the third edition of an award-winning, Indigenous-authored and edited book for the tertiary sector.