lifewriting

Lifewriting, or life writing, is a broad term for genres and practices that document and interpret human life through narrative. It includes first-person forms such as autobiography, memoir, and reminiscence, as well as third-person forms like biography. It also encompasses diaries, letters, oral histories, and contemporary digital and multimedia expressions of life narratives.

Forms and media span traditional print and contemporary digital formats, including blogs, podcast memoirs, video diaries, and social-media narratives. Lifewriting also appears in archives, scholarly biography, and community or collaborative projects that collect personal histories.

Purposes include self-understanding and memory preservation, personal healing, cultural and family history, and social or political critique. It can illuminate marginalized perspectives and public history, while inviting critical attention to bias, memory distortions, and ethical responsibilities toward others. Ethical considerations emphasize consent, respectful representation, accuracy, privacy, and the potential for harm when sensitive subjects are involved.

Craft and study approaches emphasize narrative voice, structure, and evidence; reflexivity about memory and subjectivity; and methods drawn from literary studies, history, anthropology, and archival research. As a field, lifewriting challenges traditional notions of objectivity and authority by foregrounding individual perspective, memory, and interpretation. It is both a literary practice and a subject of interdisciplinary inquiry, with relevance to education, cultural heritage, and personal or collective storytelling.