Welcome to our second issue in our two-part series on the interfaces of auto/biography. In this issue we highlight new approaches to auto/biography theory and explorations of new strategies for life writing in the twenty-first century.

We take this opportunity to say goodbye to two of our editors, Sophie Mayer and Lucie Gélineau, who have gone on to bigger and better things. Both have been invaluable in their respective roles, Sophie as an editor par excellence, and Lucie in her capacity as French editor and translator. Both will be missed.

Sophie was particularly instrumental in editing submissions for this special series on auto/biography. The pieces in both issues reflect her effort, as well as that of the rest of the co-editor team in charge of this double issue, Karen Dias and Jenéa Tallentire.

In “Writing Bridges: Memoirs Potential for Community Building,” Stephanie Hammerwold argues for the potential for fostering community through memoir, building bridges across difference. Memoir contains transformative potential in its merging of the shared and the unique, thus building bridges between individuals in a way that accounts for both similarity and difference. Hammerwold also explores the ways memoirists engage the reader in the process of writing, thus breaking apart the notion that writing and reading are solitary acts.

In her article, “The Politics of Reading the Autobiographical I’s: The ‘Truth’ About Outi,” Tuija Saresma weaves together many versions of the auto/biographical I in her discussion of one woman's lifewriting. In doing so, she also takes the interesting step of integrating her correspondence with her subject, and placing Outi's own impressions of Saresma's (earlier) work on Outi's lifewriting within the text, in layers of discourse that foregrounds the writer as well as the subject and prompts questions of how readings of the autobiographical I can deviate from the author's own sense of themselves. Saresma’s analysis shows that the quest for the ‘truth’ about oneself is futile, and the ‘real me’ is only a cherished illusion. However, the lack of stable identity categories opens up a space for feminist politics. She argues that the separation of the I’s is a useful tool for feminist politics, and a model for an ethical reading of the autobiographies of unknown/ordinary women.

In her paper, “Shulamith Hareven’s Many Days as an Israeli Fictional Autobiography/ Autobiographical Fiction” Zohar Weiman Kelman discusses the ‘fictional’ autobiography of Israeli writer, essayist, military officer and peace activist, Shulamit Hareven. In contrast to a classical retrospective narrative, this unique autobiography offers a narrative reconstructed from Hareven’s lifetime of work, including fiction, prose and political essays. Focusing on both the authors’ Israeli context and bringing in feminist theory of autobiography, Kelman deftly guides the reader through the complex borders between the I and the collective Israeli national narrative ever-present in Hareven’s text.

Elizabeth Wilson Gordon, in her paper, "Romanticizing Sylvia Plath: Feminism and Literary Biography" claims that an examination of the representation of women as writers in biography can reveal important details about feminist investments in, and uses of, the Romantic tradition. Through a detailed examination of two antagonistic treatments of Sylvia Plath: Jacqueline Rose’s The Haunting of Sylvia Plath, and Anne Stevenson’s Bitter Fame, Gordon claims that while both authors have different methodological approaches and different purposes (Rose claims she is not writing a biography), they both present Plath in terms of the Romantic figure of the Artist. Although Gordon concedes that it may be difficult to conceive of an artist, and Plath in particular, from outside the ideology of Romanticism, she reminds us that there are possible alternative conceptions of the artist. She argues, however, that without acknowledging the underlying concepts that shape the understanding of a life, an artist’s life, and the life’s relation to artistic production, the use of other models will not be possible.

And in her essay, “Resurrecting Our Foremothers: My Hopes as a Biographer, Journalist, and Blogger,” Natalie Bennett proposes a new medium for historical research and recognition of women’s lives - the blog. Given the ease of setup and access in blogging, the academic blog used to post even small bits of found info on women in history offers us “a chance to record and recount women’s lives in a form potentially accessible to anyone at this point and time, and possibly for far into the future.” Given the increasingly competitive and conservative publishing industry, Bennett feels that blog publication “is the best hope we have of providing warm life, not just cryogenic storage, for our foremothers and modern compatriots.”

Enjoy!