Experimental Life Writing Today
Published on 30. October 2025
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-1-350-52991-5 (ISBN)
Description
This comprehensive volume offers compelling critical essays surveying the myriad forms of innovation in contemporary Anglophone life writing. Experimental Life Writing Today provides a historical and critical context for examining avant-garde tendencies in biography and autobiography and outlines the poetics of experimental life writing.
The volume is divided into two parts. The first is devoted to a selection of experimental genres of life writing: autofiction, biofiction, paramemoir, autotheory, graphic memoir, photo-memoir, eco-memoir and the lyric essay. Part Two includes chapters concerned with the following themes, concepts and devices set in the context of experimental life writing: illness, disability, mourning, relationality, place, catalogue, narration and fragmentation.
To ensure clarity and consistency, each chapter follows the same structure: a theoretical discussion of a given notion, comprising a brief discussion of its various aspects and examples, followed by a close reading of a chosen text. Case studies are devoted to significant contemporary works by authors such as Hazel V. Carby, J. M. Coetzee, Anne Garreta, Karen Green, Vona Groarke, Han Kang, Mary Karr, Deborah Levy, Hilary Mantel, Maggie Nelson, Ruth Ozeki, Mark Tredinnick, Una, D.J. Waldie and Wim Wenders. The volume is dedicated to exploring innovative forms of, and in, contemporary Anglophone life writing, and it makes an important contribution to a rich and burgeoning field of interdisciplinary practice and research.
The volume is divided into two parts. The first is devoted to a selection of experimental genres of life writing: autofiction, biofiction, paramemoir, autotheory, graphic memoir, photo-memoir, eco-memoir and the lyric essay. Part Two includes chapters concerned with the following themes, concepts and devices set in the context of experimental life writing: illness, disability, mourning, relationality, place, catalogue, narration and fragmentation.
To ensure clarity and consistency, each chapter follows the same structure: a theoretical discussion of a given notion, comprising a brief discussion of its various aspects and examples, followed by a close reading of a chosen text. Case studies are devoted to significant contemporary works by authors such as Hazel V. Carby, J. M. Coetzee, Anne Garreta, Karen Green, Vona Groarke, Han Kang, Mary Karr, Deborah Levy, Hilary Mantel, Maggie Nelson, Ruth Ozeki, Mark Tredinnick, Una, D.J. Waldie and Wim Wenders. The volume is dedicated to exploring innovative forms of, and in, contemporary Anglophone life writing, and it makes an important contribution to a rich and burgeoning field of interdisciplinary practice and research.
Reviews / Votes
This is an essential text for anyone interested in experimental forms of life writing, and indeed anyone interested in life writing in its various genres, subgenres, topics and approaches. Thanks to its vast range of case studies, it is also a key text for anyone interested in contemporary writing. * Lucia Boldrini, Emerita of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Illustrations
15 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
564 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-52991-5 (9781350529915)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Vanessa Guignery is Professor of Contemporary English Literature and Postcolonial Literature at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, France. She is the author of seven academic books, including Julian Barnes from the Margins: Exploring the Writer's Archives (Bloomsbury, 2020), and co-editor of over 20 monographs and special issues of academic journals.
Wojciech Drag is Associate Professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. He is the author of two books, including Collage in Twenty-First-Century Literature: Art of Crisis (2020). He has co-edited (with Vanessa Guignery) The Poetics of Fragmentation in Contemporary British and American Fiction (2019) and three other volumes.
Wojciech Drag is Associate Professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. He is the author of two books, including Collage in Twenty-First-Century Literature: Art of Crisis (2020). He has co-edited (with Vanessa Guignery) The Poetics of Fragmentation in Contemporary British and American Fiction (2019) and three other volumes.
Content
I. Introduction
A Cartography of Experimental Life Writing - Wojciech Drag, University of Wroclaw, Poland; Vanessa Guignery, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, France
II. Genres
1. Autofiction (Martha Swift, University of Oxford, UK)
2. Biofiction (Laura Cernat, KU Leuven, Belgium)
3. Paramemoir (Irene Kacandes, Dartmouth College, USA)
4. Autotheory (Robert Kusek, Jagiellonian University, Poland)
5. Graphic memoir (Elzbieta Klimek-Dominiak, University of Wroclaw, Poland)
6. Photo-memoir (Teresa Brus, University of Wroclaw, Poland)
7. Eco-memoir (Martina Horakova, Masaryk University, Czechia)
8. Lyric essay (Laura De La Parra Fernandez, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
III. Themes, concepts and devices
9. Illness (Maria Antonietta Struzziero, independent scholar)
10. Disability (Pawel Wojtas, University of Warsaw, Poland)
11. Mourning (Heloise Lecomte, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, France)
12. Relationality (Kim Schoof, Open University, Netherlands)
13. Place (Joseph Darlington, Futureworks Media School, UK)
14. Catalogue (Grzegorz Maziarczyk, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
15. Narration (Zuzana Foniokova, Masaryk University, Czechia)
16. Fragmentation (Dominika Ferens, University of Wroclaw, Poland, Wojciech Drag, University of Wroclaw, Poland)
Index
A Cartography of Experimental Life Writing - Wojciech Drag, University of Wroclaw, Poland; Vanessa Guignery, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, France
II. Genres
1. Autofiction (Martha Swift, University of Oxford, UK)
2. Biofiction (Laura Cernat, KU Leuven, Belgium)
3. Paramemoir (Irene Kacandes, Dartmouth College, USA)
4. Autotheory (Robert Kusek, Jagiellonian University, Poland)
5. Graphic memoir (Elzbieta Klimek-Dominiak, University of Wroclaw, Poland)
6. Photo-memoir (Teresa Brus, University of Wroclaw, Poland)
7. Eco-memoir (Martina Horakova, Masaryk University, Czechia)
8. Lyric essay (Laura De La Parra Fernandez, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
III. Themes, concepts and devices
9. Illness (Maria Antonietta Struzziero, independent scholar)
10. Disability (Pawel Wojtas, University of Warsaw, Poland)
11. Mourning (Heloise Lecomte, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, France)
12. Relationality (Kim Schoof, Open University, Netherlands)
13. Place (Joseph Darlington, Futureworks Media School, UK)
14. Catalogue (Grzegorz Maziarczyk, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
15. Narration (Zuzana Foniokova, Masaryk University, Czechia)
16. Fragmentation (Dominika Ferens, University of Wroclaw, Poland, Wojciech Drag, University of Wroclaw, Poland)
Index