F199.
On Biogoir: Blending Biography & Memoir
Friday, March 25, 2022
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
What happens when a project sets out to examine one life but winds up connecting to another—your own? Panelists discuss the blurring of biography and memoir: What shape might a fused form take? What ethical issues arise when your story creeps into someone else’s? What does research look like? Is there a market? Sharing from their own projects across a range of media, including podcasts, magazines, and books, panelists examine the problems and possibilities of the "biogoir" mashup.
Participants
Jeremy Jones is the author of the memoir Bearwallow, which was awarded gold in the 2015 IPPY awards. His essays appear in Oxford American, Brevity, the Iowa Review, and others. The series coeditor of In Place, he is an associate professor of English at Western Carolina University.
Sarah Viren is the author of the essay collection MINE, winner of the River Teeth Book Prize and the GLCA New Writers Award. A contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, she is also an assistant professor at Arizona State University.
Lucas Mann is the author of Captive Audience: On Love and Reality Television, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. A recipient of fellowships from United States Artists and the National Endowment for the Arts, he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Eric Mennel is a senior producer at Pineapple Street Studios and host of the podcast Stay Away from Matthew MaGill. His reporting has appeared on This American Life, NPR, Marketplace, 99% Invisible, and other programs. He is a cocreator of the podcast Criminal.
L.M. Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas has a creative nonfiction and a literary translation MFAs from the University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing, and Don’t Come Back from Mad Creek Books. She is a Rona Jaffe fellow and works as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
