Exploring the history of autofiction

Please note, this course has been moved from the original date of Wednesday 6 July 2022.

Read the course outline (PDF)

What is autofiction and why is everyone talking about it? Is it just a marketing term or are we watching the emergence of a form of life writing which is more daring than memoir and less guarded than autobiographical fiction? Do its practitioners, such as Karl Ove Knausgaard, risk too much for their writing? Knausgaard’s six volume epic My Struggle, a minute exposure of himself and also his family (who no longer speak to him) is described by him as a ‘Faustian pact’, but is art ever worth that much? And to what extent can the reproduction of a life’s banalities be seen as art anyway?

In this webinar, our life writing tutor, Frances Wilson, reveals the lengths that writers have gone to tell their tales, regardless of the consequences.

This course takes place on Zoom and we will email you a joining link the day before. You will be encouraged to ask questions using Zoom’s chat function.

Live captions will be provided by Stagetext.

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