Life Stories - Topics

What makes an anecdote worth repeating at a funeral? What makes a memoir worth reading: scene versus summary The difference between an autobiography and a ghostwritten celebrity memoir How a family photo album turns into a documentary project How oral historians handle a narrator who contradicts the written record Recording my father's voice notes turned into a family archive Prison writing programs and the life stories that come out of them How to interview your grandparents before their stories are lost What makes a family memoir worth printing for relatives only? Who owns a family story after it is donated to an archive The immigrant story my mother never told until she was 70 Why do autobiographies skip the quiet decade that explains everything? Story archives and the ethics of naming the dead How oral history interviews are edited and what that does to the evidence Fieldwork ethics when the story you collected belongs to a living family Searching for your own origin story after an adoption How do you draw out a life story from someone who insists their life was unremarkable? A village oral history project and the year it took to record The family origin story that gets retold differently at every reunion How do you archive a life story so grandchildren can find it in forty years? How long should a grandparent's life story video run? What do you do when your sister remembers the memoir's central scene differently? Why the best biographies of scientists are usually written by historians Which questions actually open up a life story interview? How do you record a life story when the narrator keeps revising it? What do you do with a life story that contradicts the family legend? How do you start a life story interview with a relative who never talks about the war? What consent do you need before publishing someone's spoken life story? How do you conduct a life story interview across a language barrier? What should a life story interviewer never ask about a dead child? What happened when I traced my adoption story through old records How do you protect a life story narrator who reveals something legally sensitive?