Public Lecture:
'On Life-Writing (Part I):
Elleke Boehmer and Kate Kennedy in Conversation'
For many readers, life-writing-especially memoir-is taken to offer a representation of a life that is more or less believed to be true, or as true as memory work can make it. Yet recent, high profile controversies have called many of those truth claims into question.
In this session, leading life-writers, Elleke Boehmer and Kate Kennedy, draw on their research and experiences as writers to explore the boundaries between memory and invention, truth and storytelling, in contemporary life writing. Focusing on texts including Raynor Winn's The Salt Path, Elleke Boehmer's The Shouting in the Dark, and Helen Zenna Smith's Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War, they ask:
How much invention can legitimately go into life writing?
How much of memoir is made up, and-when in doubt-why not resort to autofiction?
This event is the first in a two-part series that introduces some of the major questions animating contemporary life‑writing. Be sure to join us for Part II, when Kate Kennedy sits down with Hermione Lee to discuss biography and their different approaches to telling life stories.
Speaker Details:
Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English and Executive Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. She is a Fellow of the English Academy, of the Royal Society of Literature, and of the Royal Historical Society. She is a member of the Dutch Society of Letters and a Rhodes Trustee. In 2024, she held an International Visiting Fellowship award at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Elleke has published biography, history and criticism, including Postcolonial Poetics (2018); Indian Arrivals 1870-1915 (2015; winner of the biennial ESSE prize 2016) and Nelson Mandela (2008, 2023). Southern Imagining, a literary history of the southern hemisphere, her seventh monograph, will appear from Princeton University Press, later in 2025. Elleke Boehmer's fiction includes To the Volcano, and other stories (2019; commended Elizabeth Jolley Prize), and The Shouting in the Dark (winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize 2018). Her novel Ice Shock is forthcoming.
Kate Kennedy is a writer, cellist, and BBC broadcaster. Her work combines words and music, in performance, on the radio, and on the page. She is a Research Fellow in Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Her most recent book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound (2024) is part memoir, part biography, and her previous biography Dweller in Shadows (2021) explored the life of British poet-composer Ivor Gurney. She is a regular presenter for BBC Radio.
Further Details and Contacts:
After the event, join us for a book signing/sale by Caper* and a complimentary wine reception.
This event is free and open to all; however, registration is recommended.
This is an in-person event, but it will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.
Registration will close at 14:30 on 13 October 2025.
Any queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.
*Caper is an independent family bookshop, activity, and event space in East Oxford. They have a range of books for children, a curated selection of great books for grown-ups, and a number of interesting and beautiful cookbooks. They offer storytime, art, music, and cookery workshops for children, author visits, and regular book talks in the evenings.
