Memoir

I was going through my notebooks the other day when I came across a piece of paper; a torn scrap on which I'd written hurriedly a name and the plot number of a grave. Writing a family story is a question of finding where the bodies are buried and this, in very real terms, had been the first clue.  Read more

Confusing Memoir with Autobiography

Writing a memoir is not the same as writing an autobiography. In an autobiography, you typically start at the beginning of your life and record all the details you can remember, chronologically. In a memoir, you take a slice from your life-a particular theme or lesson or flavor of experience-and write about that, pretty much ignoring the rest.  Read more

I've always been interested in family stories, my father's in particular. He grew up in a Cypriot village at a time of political unrest, during the island's struggle for independence. His education was cut short because his father couldn't afford the bus fare to school. In the 1960s he moved to England with ten pounds in his pocket and spent his first night in a telephone box.  Read more

Biography combines history, psychology, and gossip, and there will always be a market for its insights into the Life (how careers crest or crater) and the Times (the context of each life) of a stranger.  Read more

Long before the rise of "autofiction", and the contemporary wave of authors drawing from their own lives for their novels - Rachel Cusk, Geoff Dyer, Sheila Heti, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ben Lerner and others - many writers in the first half of the 20th century were experimenting with the limits of autobiography.  Read more