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 ‘Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.’ Scott Fitzgerald, The Love of the Last Tycoon (1941). 

As Fitzgerald observes, writers are many people and in their work they can choose which of those people to be or to create multiple versions of themselves through different characters.  This course is themed around the idea of writing lives and the meanings that the idea carries. There are always elements of fiction in autobiography and elements of autobiography in fiction. What makes us read them differently? What do writers draw on for inspiration and whose lives make the best material? What is at stake when a story is presented as ‘the truth’?  Is good life writing, in all its various guises, at the heart of everything we love to read? Writing Lives is about the life of the writer and how he/she uses experience, knowledge and research to create their story.  We will evaluate the creations that really catch our imagination and teach us something.  We will find our way into this subject through reading novels, short fiction, essays and life writing - all carefully chosen to fire the imagination and inspire you to write.