Writing non-fiction: Lives - past and present

Aims of the course

What makes an interesting life and how can we tell it? In this course, we look at how the writer of non-fiction can make fact as compelling as fiction. We explore the use of research, memory and imagination that will enable us as writers to tantalise, astonish and satisfy our reader.

Course content

Writing about lives has a long and distinguished past. Plutarch was fascinated by the parallel lives of great men; Doctor Johnson maintained it was possible to write the life of a broomstick. Oscar Wilde described biographers as the “body snatchers” of literature, while Virginia Woolf left a vast legacy to life writing through her autobiographical novels, letters and diaries. Sigmund Freud gave biographers the freedom to delve into the psyche of their subject.

A century later, life writing has never been more lively or diverse. And there is a growing demand for unexpected and surprising examples of life writing from a whole raft of new writers with highly original stories to tell. There are books that cross genres or borrow techniques from fiction: Edmund de Waal’s epic family history, The Hare with Amber Eyes, which spans centuries and continents, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which tackles race and medical ethics, have both sold thousands of copies around the world. And memoir writing is rushing to embrace our multicultural society with multi-ethnic roots, as witnessed by Aida Edemariam’s The Wife’s Tale, a cradle to grave life story of the author’s Ethiopian grandmother.

The secrets of a life might be waiting to be discovered in a musty attic, or in a temperature-controlled annex of an archive. Or, if you are writing a memoir, perhaps you are just looking for the courage and inspiration to tell your story in a way that will grip your reader –whether you want that reader to be your grandchild, or someone browsing in a bookshop. Life writing is a wonderful mixture of research, looking for the right structure on which to hang that research and then, finally, beginning to find the voice to tell that story. This course offers the chance to do all three –and to learn from the experience of other students who are facing the same challenges, but, perhaps, from a different perspective or from within a different historical period. This course will send you home with ideas, inspiration and the tools to start building a life story.

Presentation of the course

The course will be taught through a mixture of presentations, practical creative writing exercises, text analysis and afternoon workshopping of set writing tasks. Great emphasis is placed on discussion to encourage critical thinking.

Class sessions

Day 1.  A creative approach to life writingNot all stories start at the beginning. Today we examine practical examples from published authors to show the range of possibilities open to life writers in “re-creating” the past.

Day 2. The joys of researchItcan be teasing and frustrating, but research can also be exhilarating and just pure fun. Today we look at the types of historical records available and what they can tell us.

Day 3. A sense of placeMore than backdrops, greater than scene-setters, the locations for our stories infuse them with meaning. And, as we’ll discover today, they can also add depth, colour and understanding.

Day 4. Bringing objects to lifeWhat can we read into objects left behind by ancestors, eminent people, or things that were precious in our own childhood? Artefacts can be full of humanity; they may be items that have been touched and worn, or worked by skilled hands. Today we see how we can interpret and draw on their emotional power to tell and illustrate our stories.

Day 5. Building blocks of a storyMemory is key to writing about a life, but how reliable is it? What part should ethics play when you’re delving into the past? And how might you actually tell your story? We conclude the week with thoughts about building your structure.

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are:
1. An understanding of some of the different ways of researching a life;
2. An appreciation of the part imagination may play in life writing;
3. An awareness of the different ways of structuring the story of someone’s life.

Written assignments as part of the course (all students)

Writing will play a major part in this Summer Programme. Each student is given the opportunity to produce up to four 350 -400-word creative pieces through the week to be submitted for discussion by the class. Pieces should be submitted electronically to an online portal, for which a link will be sent to you on arrival (at Registration), no later than 6.15pm each evening on the following days:

Monday (for the workshop session on Tuesday)
Tuesday (for the workshop session on Wednesday)
Wednesday (for the workshop session on Thursday)
Thursday (for the workshop session on Friday)

Students should aim to read their fellow participants’ work before the afternoon session each day, so that pieces can be discussed during the workshops.

The aim of these courses is to create, for their duration, a community of writers –a group of practitioners naturally interested in developing their own work, but also sensitive to the needs of their fellow-students. The classroom discussion of others’ writing needs to be simultaneously stringent and supportive; and it should be remembered that each participant can learn as much from a full engagement in the discussion of the work of others as from that part of the discussion that focuses on his/her own writing.

Required reading

Edemariam, Aida The Wife’s Tale. 4th Estate, 2018A remarkable evocation of Ethiopia through the 20th century, as the author lets us see through the eyes of her grandmother.

Verzemnieks, Inara. Among the Living and the Dead. Pushkin Press, 2018An exploration of identity, truth and memory as the US-born author tries to uncover the hinterland of her grandparents’ lives in Latvia.

Typical week: Monday to Friday

Courses run from Monday to Friday. For each week of study, you select a morning (Am) course and an afternoon (Pm) course. The maximum class size is 25 students. 

Courses are complemented by a series of daily plenary lectures, exploring new ideas in a wide range of disciplines. To add to the learning experience, we are also planning additional evening talks and events.

Evaluation and Academic Credit 

If you are seeking to enhance your own study experience, or earn academic credit from your Cambridge Summer Programme studies at your home institution, you can submit written work for assessment for one or more of your courses. 

Essay questions are set and assessed against the University of Cambridge standard by your Course Director, a list of essay questions can be found in the Course Materials. Essays are submitted two weeks after the end of each course, so those studying for multiple weeks need to plan their time accordingly. There is an evaluation fee of £75 per essay.

For more information about writing essays see Evaluation and Academic Credit.

Certificate of attendance

A certificate of attendance will be sent to you electronically after the programme.