Life writing continues to be popular, both judging by the titles sold in bookshops and the books that receive literary awards. With many recent life-writing texts, bookshops arguably have a hard time, if they want to shelve them within distinct categories of fiction and non-fiction. Alexandra Effe, a postdoctoral research fellow at LCE (UiO), investigates how, and to which effects, literary narratives combine fictional and factual modes. Listen to her discussing the concept of autofiction in conversation with Stijn Vervaet. In particular, they talk about how the concept allows us to develop new perspectives on life-writing experiments throughout literary history.

Do you think you would read differently depending on whether you take a text to be a short story or a newspaper article? Do you believe that texts can challenge and change what feels true? 

Post-production: Eivind Rutle

Written alternative