ABSTRACT

I am honoured to contribute an essay to this collection, especially since I have been described elsewhere by two of this volume’s editors as one of the reasons we need to take a biographical turn. This will not, however, be a self-defense, because in terms of the charges lodged against me, I would have to plead guilty. What might be more useful for this collection, if only to supply up-to-date information about biographical scholarship and theory’s relative prominence within the ever-expanding field of Life Writing, would be data from Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, the journal I have co-edited for 22 years, that show what researchers and critics actually download. I will then look at a recent movement by biographers to create a forum for discussion and professional development through the Biographers International Organization, or BIO. What I hope will emerge is not only a sense of current trends in Life Writing from a consumer perspective, but also some suggestions for how apparent divisions might be bridged in mutually beneficial ways for Life Writing and biography researchers, scholars and practitioners.