The Arvon Book of Life Writing Writing Biography, Autobiography and Memoir

by Cline, Sally; Angier, Carole

• ISBN13: 9781408124185
• ISBN10: 1408124181
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-08-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama

Summary

This practical handbook for writers includes the best resources and techniques from the world famous Arvon writing course. It answers the key questions writers have when tackling a biography or memoirmethods of research, authorization, interpretation, and a variety of ethical issues. The book is filled with practical exercises to develop writing skills in empathy, managing drama and suspense, interviewing, narration and reflection and developing the story line plus has professional advice from twenty well-known literary, cultural, political, sports and celebrity biographers, family memoirists, travel writers and ghost writers.

Author Biography

Carole Angier has written biographies of Jean Rhys (winner of the Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Award) and Primo Levi. She is a regular critic for The Independent, The Spectator and The Literary Review, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and teaches life writing at Birkbeck College, London University.

 

Sally Cline, award-winning biographer, short story writer and winner of the BBC short story contest, is the author of nine books, including ground-breaking biographies of Radclyffe Hall, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund and a judge and mentor for the Arts Council Escalator scheme.

 

Both Carole and Sally work as one-to-one mentors with emerging writers.

Table of Contents

“For anyone who has ever read a biography or memoir, or  thought of writing  one—this book of advice from the best writers in the U.K. is an instant classic."—Elaine Showalter