Into being

The radical craft of memoir and its power to transform

Lily Dunn

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN:
  9781526179258
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526179241
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The acclaimed author of Sins of My Father shares the secrets of writing a new, transformative kind of memoir.

Into being is an essential guide to writing radical and empowering memoir. Drawing on her experience as a memoirist and a teacher of creative writing, Lily Dunn presents the ground-breaking idea that the craft of memoir itself can offer a form of transformation.

Dunn demystifies the memoirist's art, helping readers to find meaning in raw experience and elevate the personal to the universal. She considers compelling questions, from why our memories give greater significance to certain events to how we can write honestly without intruding too far into the lives of our loved ones. She also explores how writers are extending the memoir form to create something hybrid, playful and subversive.

In an age of social media, filled with confessions, re-inventions and distortions of the self, the question of what it means to be an individual is more urgent than ever. Into being shows readers how to turn writing memoir into a journey of discovery – one that can be shared with the whole world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: from repatterning to becoming
• 1: Taper in the rushing wind: moments of insight
• 2: Snow in August: when memory collides with the imagination
• 3: From the static into the moving world: the memoirisation of time
• 4: Radical deconstruction: embodied writing and protective forms
• 5: The holder of the threads: who is speaking and where are they standing?
• 6: Writing about others: our other selves
• 7: Who gets the last word? Extracts from author conversations
• Further reading
• Acknowledgements
• Index