Creative Writing

This volume offers comprehensive overviews of the actual state of the field of Biography Studies. The connections between biography and the fields of microhistory, journalism and Life Writing illuminate key challenges in studying individual lives. Different perspectives are provided on the ways in which biography contributes to scholarship in the humanities and academic historiography in particular.

Memoir: An Introduction proffers a succinct and comprehensive survey of the genre, while taking readers through the various techniques, themes and debates that have come to characterize the form. Memoir's fictional origins are traced to 18th-century British novels; its early American roots are examined in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and colonial captivity narratives; and its ethical conundrums are considered via the imbroglios brought on by the questionable claims in Rigoberta Menchú's I, Rigoberta, and more notoriously, James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Reading Autobiography, originally published in 2001, was the first comprehensive critical introduction to life writing in all its forms. Widely adopted for undergraduate and graduate-level courses, it is an essential guide for students and scholars reading and interpreting autobiographical texts and methods across the humanities, social sciences, and visual and performing arts.

Ranging from the diary's historical origins to its pervasive presence on the Internet, from the spiritual journey of the sixteenth century to the diary of Anne Frank, and from the materials and methods of diary writing to the question of how diaries end, these essays display Philippe Lejeune's expertise, eloquence, passion and humor as a commentator on the functions, practices and significance of keeping or reading a diary.

Our lives are increasingly on display in public, but the ethical issues involved in presenting such revelations remain largely unexamined. How can life writing do good, and how can it cause harm? The eleven essays in The Ethics of Life Writing explore such questions. They focus chiefly on autobiography and biography, but their findings apply to all "life writing", including case studies, diaries, ethnographies, interviews and profiles.

Considered classic in the field of non-fiction writing, this guide gives practical advice on writing and researching magazine articles, discusses various specialized markets and describes the life of a writer.