Autofiction is a word you hear a lot, a word that is difficult to define, the ‘bad’ genre used to describe writers from Danté and Proust to Annie Ernaux via Rachel Cusk, Knausgaard and Sheila Heti. But what does autofiction actually mean? And, if you’re using your own life as your material, how do you know when you’re writing it?
For Serge Doubrovsky, autofiction is a hybrid of fiction and autobiography: “Fiction of strictly real events or facts; the autofiction, if you like, of having entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of language.”
In this online Masterclass, join acclaimed writer Susanna Crossman in an exploration of how our lived experiences can be shaped and reimagined on the page as autofiction! In this introductory session of a three-part series, we’ll be unearthing the history of autofiction, examining its complexities and avant-garde vibe. We’ll be experimenting with POV, voice, style and getting inventive, writing the self and the selves we make up. We’ll also address questions of ethics and emotional truth. Come along to shake up your personal narrative ideas, rock the world and be bad!
Our interactive class/workshop will combine:
- Exploring and understanding the history, writers and texts which are part of ‘autofiction’ from the experimental ‘I’, breaking the autobiographical pact, via psychoanalysis to autofiction as resistance.
- Learning techniques for blending truth and invention in service of autofiction work.
- We will do generative autofiction writing exercises which allow you to move from real life to auto-fiction without losing narrative control, through POV, voice, inventing new rules.
- The masterclasses will give you practical tools for creating distance from autobiographical material while retaining emotional honesty.
- We will discuss handling vulnerability, ethics, permission and truth
- A Q & A.
We’ll be giving ourselves the permission to experiment with form, with intention, care, and artistic freedom. The session will provide a supportive, rigorous space. This course is open to beginners and experienced writers, poets, essayists, novelists, and short story writers who want to discover autofiction.
Tickets
This event will be recorded for the purpose of sending to ticket holders who can’t make the event, and those who require the recording to meet their access needs. Tickets purchased after the event takes place will be given access to the session recording for ten days after the session.
You can purchase an individual £30 ticket for this event, or a combination ticket for £75 which includes Susanna’s previous sessions in this series:
- 18th June | Autofiction, à la française, and writing autofiction as resistance | £30
- 16th July |Autofiction and breaking the rules | £30
