Writing Lives: Biography and Beyond Oxford Centre for Life-Writing

Noted feminist economist Devaki Jain talks about writing her memoir, The Brass Notebook (2020), with her long-term friend, Gloria Steinem. They are hosted by Katherine Collins and Elleke Boehmer. Together, they discuss Jain and Steinem’s friendship (which spans many years as fellow activists), telling their mothers’ stories, and women becoming more radical as they get older.

Content warning: brief discussion of sexual assault.

Keywords: feminism, economics, India, motherhood, family history, activism, feminist economics.

Find out more about:

Devaki Jain:


Book: The Brass Notebook: A Memoir (2020)
Profile: ‘First Women at Oxford’

Gloria Steinem:


Website: https://www.gloriasteinem.com/
Twitter: @GloriaSteinem

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing:


Website: https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/
Twitter: @OxLifeWriting

If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our online book club, then join our Friends of OCLW scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own writing projects.

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Artwork by Una. Edited by Charles Pidgeon.

John Schad’s experimental biography, Paris Bride: A Modernist Life, mixes fact and fiction as it speculates on the life of one of his ancestors, Marie Schad. Confronted with scant archival fact, John turns to literary pastiche and quotation to imagine her early-twentieth-century life by thinking alongside modernist writers. Long-time friend of the podcast, Alexandra Harris, a writer and literary critic who specialises in literary modernism, joins this discussion to give her insights on the literary context.

Keywords: twentieth-century, modernism, experimental biography, post-criticism, family history.

Find out more about:

John Schad:


Book: Paris Bride: A Modernist Life (2020)
John is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Lancaster. See profile.

Alexandra Harris:


Website: https://www.alexandraharris.co.uk/
Twitter: @AlexHHarris

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing:


Website: https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/
Twitter: @OxLifeWriting

If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our online book club, then join our Friends Scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own writing projects.

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Artwork by Una. Edited by Charles Pidgeon.

Helena Attlee and Sophy Roberts have both written "biographies" of musical instruments. Sophy Roberts’s book, The Lost Pianos of Siberia, sees her track down these instruments in remote landscapes all across Russia, tracing the unique importance of pianos to Tsarist and USSR history, and the poignant stories of the individuals who used them. Helena Attlee’s book, Lev’s Violin, follows the story of one particular violin across Italy and beyond, describing the wider history of European luthiers, and exploring how we ascribe monetary value to these emotionally charged objects. They talk to Kate Kennedy (herself a cellist) about what it means to write the story of an instrument.

Donate to restore Lev’s Violin: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/save-levs-violin

Find out more about:

Sophy Roberts:


Book: The Lost Pianos of Siberia (2020)
Website: https://www.sophyroberts.com/
Instagram: @sophy.roberts

Helena Attlee:


Book: Lev’s Violin: an Italian Adventure (2021)
Website: www.helena-attlee.com
Twitter: @HelenaAttlee

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing:


Website: https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/
Twitter: @OxLifeWriting

If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our online book club, then join our Friends Scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own writing projects.

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Artwork by Una. Edited by Charles Pidgeon.

Tamarin Norwood discusses her current project: writing the brief life of her son, Gabriel, who died shortly after his birth. Reflecting on her background as an artist and researcher, she talks about the deep coincidences between her doctoral research and her experiences of pregnancy, as well as how pervasive metaphors (to do with sleeping, being underwater, or in the dark) structure our cultural narratives around birth, death, and bereavement.

Content warning: this episode discusses neonatal loss, grief, motherhood, and pregnancy.

Find out more about:

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing: https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/  @OxLifeWriting.

Tamarin Norwood: https://tamarinnorwood.co.uk/  @TamarinNorwood

Works mentioned:

Sarah Knott, Mother is a verb (Sarah Crichton Books, 2019).

If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our online book club, then join our Friends Scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own writing projects.

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Artwork by Una.

Edited by Charles Pidgeon.

If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our virtual book club, then join our Friends Scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own life writing projects.

Heather Clark discusses her new and highly praised biography of Sylvia Plath with celebrated biographer Hermione Lee, as well as Oxford University student, Lucy Cobold. They talk about the challenges of writing “big” biography (Clark’s biography of Plath is over 900 pages); the importance of treating women like Plath and Virginia Woolf first and foremost as professional writers rather than patients; and the conscious decision to avoid certain loaded words (like ‘doomed’ or ‘neurotic’) when approaching a writer like Plath.



Find out more about

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing: www.oclw.ox.ac.uk @OxLifeWriting.

Heather Clark: https://heatherclarkauthor.com/  @Plathbiography

Hermione Lee: http://www.hermionelee.com/



Works mentioned

- Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf, 2020)

- Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (Chatto & Windus, 1996).



Artwork by Una.

Edited by Charles Pidgeon.

If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our virtual book club, then join our Friends Scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own life writing projects.

In this follow up discussion to Episode 1, Richard Mabey, Alexandra Harris, and Katherine Collins discuss the connections between life-writing and place. They talk about the overlap between science and poetry as ways of exploring the world around us, how our senses shape our writing, Gilbert White's attempt to communicate with his pet tortoise, and Richard's ideas about the future of nature writing.

Find out more about:

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing: www.oclw.ox.ac.uk @OxLifeWriting.

Richard Mabey: https://richardmabey.co.uk/
Alexandra Harris: https://www.alexandraharris.co.uk/

Works mentioned:

- Richard Mabey, Gilbert White: A biography of the author of The Natural History of Selbourne [1986] (Allen & Unwin, 2006).

- Alice Oswald, ‘Tithonus, 46 minutes in the life of the dawn’ in Falling Awake (Johnathan Cape, 2016).

- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life [1989] (Harper Collins, 2013).

- Richard Powers, The Overstory (W.W. Norton and Company, 2018).

- Verlyn Kinklenborg, Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)

The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.

Edited by Charles Pidgeon. Artwork by Una.