Public Lecture: On Life Writing (Part I): Elleke Boehmer & Kate Kennedy in Conversation


Registration closes at 14:30 on 13 October

For many readers, life-writing—especially memoir—is taken to offer a representation of a life that is more or less believed to be true, or as true as memory work can make it. Yet recent, high profile controversies have called many of those truth claims into question.

In this session, leading life-writers, Elleke Boehmer and Kate Kennedy, draw on their research and experiences as writers to explore the boundaries between memory and invention, truth and storytelling, in contemporary life writing. Focusing on texts including Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path, Elleke Boehmer’s The Shouting in the Dark, and Helen Zenna Smith’s Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War, they ask:

  • How much invention can legitimately go into life writing?
  • How much of memoir is made up, and—when in doubt—why not resort to autofiction?

Open to all. Registration recommended.