1-2pm, Friday, 23 March, 2018, DHT, LG.06). A one-hour panel on ‘Lives in the Archive’, exploring the place of archives in literature, life-writing, and cultural history, with visiting speakers Alison Light and Dora Osborne. Position papers will be followed by discussion. Chair: Jonathan Wild Alison Light is a writer and currently also Honorary Professorial Fellow in the English Department at […]

5.00-6.00pm, Friday 6 October, 2023, 50 George Square, Lecture Theatre G.03. Followed by Reception from 7.00pm (sponsored by NYRB) – A James Tait Black Prize Visiting Writer Event A conversation with Amit Chaudhuri, winner of the 2022 James Tait Black Prize in Biography for Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music (NYRB/Faber), celebrating the […]

Wednesday 9 April, 12:30-13:30, 2025, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Conference Room The Edinburgh Life-Writing Network reading group this semester, kindly hosted by IASH, will be on the theme of writing ‘vulnerable lives’, particularly in the context of the medical humanities. We’ll discuss Thomas Couser’s ‘Auto/Biographical, Biomedical, and Ethnographic Ethics’, from Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics […]

A conversation with the renowned writer and musician Amit Chaudhuri, following the award of the James Tait Memorial Prize for Biography for Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Classical Music, recorded in January 2023, ahead of a planned visit to the University as part of the James Tait Black Visiting Writers Programme later in […]

Wednesday, 8 March, 2023, at 4:30pm in 40GS, Room #LG11. In his Baillie Gifford Prize-winning Blood Legacy: Reckoning with a Family’s Story of Slavery, Alex Renton goes on a disturbing journey through his family archive, which yields up a horrific—yet not uncommon—story about his Fergusson ancestors’ involvement in Caribbean plantations where they owned, bought, and […]

A James Tait Black Visiting Writers Series Event. 5.00-6.00pm, with reception to follow, Monday 13 February, 2023, G.01, ground floor, 50 George Square A conversation on writing lives with the brilliant biographer and critic Frances Wilson. Frances Wilson has written exhilarating biographies, as daring as they are elegant, with remarkable historical range, which all raise questions and shape […]

Monday 9 October, 2.10-4pm, 2023, Teaching Room, Centre for Research Collections, 6th Floor of the University Main Library. As part of the James Tait Black Visiting Writer Programme, we are delighted that Amit Chaudhuri will speak to today’s Reading Group in person. Readings: Amit Chaudhuri, “I Am Ramu” (pdf can be provided), and Annie Ernaux, trans. Alison L. Strayer, The […]

Thursday 25 November, 2021; 2-3pm, Project Room. Michael Lackey, ‘The Bio-national Symbolism of Founding Biofictions’ (Auto/Biography Studies 31: 1). Chair: Alan Goodson (Edinburgh). This ELWN Reading Group will consider the ‘biofiction’,  and the relations between biography and fiction, through engaging with one of the formative critical voices on the genre. Proposed and led by Alan Goodson, whose […]

The inaugural reading group for ELWN will discuss Laura Marcus’s work, focusing on the ‘Introduction’ and the chapter ‘Auto/biographical Spaces’, from Auto/biographical Discourses.