ENGL 3370

Life is messy. What happens when writers try to sort it out or represent its messiness for readers? In this course, we will study life writing. This nonfiction writing recounts aspects that make up a person’s life, like experiences, memories, and perspectives. Despite this categorization as nonfiction, accounts of lives inevitably have complicated relationships with truth. While life writing can cross the border between fiction and nonfiction and can take many forms, such as letters, journals, memoirs, poems, or biographies, what unites the genre is the idea that readers will glimpse the sometimes-intimate details of another person.