ABSTRACT
Life writing has become an important umbrella term for considering the array of methods and texts which enable life storytelling. Written modes of biography and autobiography have rich traditions dating back for hundreds of years and crossing the globe. Oral and visual traditions go back much further – providing links, for example, to indigenous stories and histories predating the written word. Life stories have long offered a backbone to history, particularly in linking communities and in forging and recording experiences and identities. When we think of life writing, we perhaps conventionally think of mainstream publications. But life writing goes well beyond this: life narrative is a useful term for thinking about the ways in which the spoken words – songs and performances, for instance, contribute to a history of life writing. And of course, there is a growing awareness of the role that new and digital media play in life storytelling.
