This series is a collaboration between the National Centre of Biography and Harry Hartog ANU. 

There are as many ways to write about a life as there are to live one. Historians trawl through the archives to bring people from the past into the spotlight, celebrities tell-all in their memoirs and some creative minds even experiment with the blurring of fact and fiction. The genre of life writing is very popular among readers. Biography, autobiography, memoir, published letters and diaries, essays – all are potential avenues for painting a portrait of a person and their story. This series puts authors of such texts in conversation with academic experts to talk all about the possibilities, discoveries, puzzles and challenges involved in their many and varied forays into writing lives. 

The National Centre of Biography was established in June 2008 in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University to act as a centre of activity for all those writing and reading biography in Australia and beyond. Since then, we have built a vibrant community of readers, scholars, writers and students. The NCB is also the home of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, which contains over 13,000 concise, informative and authoritative accounts of significant and representative lives from Australian history, spanning deep time to the recent past.

With the Writing Lives series, hosted in conjunction with Harry Hartog ANU, we invite you to be part of our biographical endeavour.