Biographers in Conversation

Debra Adelaide "When I Am Sixty-Four"

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In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, award-winning author Dr Debra Adelaide chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting When I Am Sixty-Four.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode: 

  • When I Am Sixty-Four is a tender, poignant story based on Debra Adelaide’s lifelong friendship with the award-winning author, Gabrielle Carey.
  • When I Am Sixty-Four began not as a planned book but as a single vivid memory that arrived unbidden while she was working on another project; it simply refused to let go.
  • A work of extraordinary depth and grace, When I Am Sixty-Four is crafted as autofiction, a hybrid genre that blurs the line between fiction and autobiography.
  • Debra defines autofiction as writing memoir using the tools of narrative fiction, shaping, rearranging, condensing, and inventing to reach for a broader emotional truth.
  • Debra explains her decision not to name Gabrielle or anyone else in the book, wanting readers to bring their own experiences of loving someone in despair to the narrative.
  • Debra describes the story’s mosaic structure of vignettes as entirely instinctive. The final tragic months of her friend’s life provide a loose chronological spine, while memories from their 50 years of shared history were weaved in. 
  • The story’s dark humour, Debra explains, was both an authentic expression of who Gabrielle Carey was, a woman with an extraordinary laugh, and a deliberate way of honouring her.
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