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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.
Date:
13 October 2025, 17:30
Venue:
Wolfson College, Linton Road OX2 6UD
Venue Details:
Leonard Wolfson Auditorium
Speakers:
Elleke Boehmer,
Kate Kennedy
Organiser contact email address:
eleri.watson@ell.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
Oxford Centre for Life-Writing
Booking required?:
Recommended
Booking url:
https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/event/public-lecture-on-life-writing-part-1-elleke-boehmer-and-kate-kennedy-in-conversation
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Belinda Clark
