A chronicler of experience and a scrutineer of memory, Annie Ernaux always tries to express something universal. By recording her experiences – of the working class, social mobility, abortion, death, divorce, jealousy, affairs, desire, and more – she asks her readers to see their lives in her writing.
Photography is often a tool in this project; Ernaux uses it to interrogate the ways we look ... (read more)
Beth Kearney

Beth Kearney is an early career scholar of contemporary literature. She is preparing a monograph on the use of photography in experimental memoir by women authors of the Francosphere. She is also researching contemporary literature (autobiography, fiction, and everything in between) that challenges national and cultural scripts of gender identity. She has published on these topics and others in several outlets, both public-facing (Asymptote, The Conversation, MAI Journal) and academic (L’Esprit créateur, Francosphères, The Australian Journal of French Studies, Modern & Contemporary France). She teaches French Studies at the University of Queensland.
Leslie Jamison never smooths over the thorny edges of life. Her first memoir, The Recovering: Intoxication and its after-math (2018), recounts her journey from addiction to sobriety – or, rather, the cycle of addiction, denial, acceptance, sobriety, and relapse that defined her path to sobriety. Like all members of Alcoholics Anonymous, she is not alone in this messy recovery, and her first memo ... (read more)