'Offshoot includes essays in life writing methodologies and approaches, as well as a series of creative work – poetry and prose – that engages with current life writing. This collection highlights the development and influence of the genre in the twenty-first century.
'Starting from the premise that life writing is a significant component of both contemporary artistic practice and scholarship, Offshoot provides a necessary re-evaluation of the mode, its contemporary sub-generic incarnations, as well as methodological and practical approaches. The book presents research on a wide range of approaches, including both traditional areas such as literature and creative writing and areas that have not previously been associated with life writing scholarship.
'With its multifaceted readings, Offshoot signals a shift in life writing research tending towards an expansive, hybrid, experimental, and rhizomic approach.' (Publication summary)
Dedication:
This book is dedicated to the lives that remain unwritten,
were deemed not important enough to write in the first
place or lost before they could be written, as well as
those who are attempting to stem this tide.
'‘Books talk among themselves’, Umberto Eco (1984: 61) once quipped convincingly. Readers overhear those conversations, I assert. Some books sing to you (as Francesca Rendle-Short, in her performative essay on memoir in Offshoot, says of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Hate Race [232]). Offshoot crackles at me. Staying ululates.' (Introduction)
'‘Books talk among themselves’, Umberto Eco (1984: 61) once quipped convincingly. Readers overhear those conversations, I assert. Some books sing to you (as Francesca Rendle-Short, in her performative essay on memoir in Offshoot, says of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s The Hate Race [232]). Offshoot crackles at me. Staying ululates.' (Introduction)
