I recently had the pleasure of doing an event with Melissa Febos, a writer I hugely admire. It was for Birkbeck, University of London, Arts Week, in conversation with author and MA course leader, Julia Bell. We spoke about the challenges of writing memoir, about making art from testimony, and how to protect those you love, among many many other interesting things. It was such a pleasure, and Melissa was so interesting to speak to. You can watch it here, and marvel at three bookshelves situated in three distinct cities, Iowa, Bristol and London.

Melissa was promoting her book, Body Work, a series of essays about the importance of the personal narrative, its power to change lives, both the reader’s and the writer’s: how it helps us have a better understanding of ourselves and how we live. It’s a book about craft, in that it will appeal to anyone writing memoir, but it’s also really a reflection on the challenge of living. Each piece is a personal essay in its own right, and does what essays do best, which is veer from one topic to another to explore a particular point, it might be sex, or language and its gendered connotations, or finding writing as a kind of religion.

I stumbled upon the first essay online, a few years prior to the book’s publication, and was so struck by it that I sent it to all my students as a must-read-if-you-want-to-write-memoir, namely because what Melissa explores – all the reasons cultural or otherwise that we don’t write personal narrative, and the importance of overcoming these – felt very close to the bone of my personal experience. I have always used my life as a springboard in my writing, and this fact has always met with criticism – I’ve been told it isn’t proper writing, as if writing from life doesn’t use the imagination; that it is self-indulgent, trouble making; that I should step away from myself. After publishing my memoir, I even had folk say it was fine I had written it, but why had I published it? As if it were solely an act of confession or self-expression. It’s worth noting here that the social conditioning of this attitude runs so deep that even if every fibre in our being is drawn towards exploring our personal experience through writing, we begin to demonise ourselves. We give up before we have even started, so plagued by that critical voice that shouts, ‘who cares, no one wants to read that!’ We are afraid of appearing tiresome or whiney in our exploration of ourselves.

What Febos suggests is that writing personal narrative is in fact a radical act, it is subversive, and the attempt to stigmatise, condescend or silence is a tool of subjugation to keep these stories under wraps. This, she suggests, is most often a tool to keep the marginal story marginalised. That the personal narrative is suppressed not because it is too domestic, or not relevant, too small, but because of its power to disrupt and bring about change. In fact, the hardest task a writer has is to nurture the ability to listen to themselves, to open their hearts, to be vulnerable, to be prepared to be exposed (and also to take the knocks). Not as an act of confession, more an act of enquiry, to dig deep into the question of why? This, then becomes a gift to the reader. The writer does the work on themselves so the reader can begin to see themselves in the pages – but only if they are ready to. Febos writes: ‘I believe that stories like these have the power to transform the world… we are writing the history that we could not find in any other book. We are telling the stories that no one else can tell, and we are giving this proof of survival to each other.’ True to life stories hit hard when they go deep into their subject, and they force the reader to listen.

So I ask you this – are you writing a book that you wish you could have read when you were younger, or going through that divorce, or considering this life path? If the answer is yes, then we need stories like yours.

Joan Didion said, ‘In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even hostile act.’ All we need to do then is keep telling ourselves that our stories do matter. That our opinion matters. That we matter.

Body Work is published by Manchester University Press. You can buy it here:

Hymnal, a memoir is verse, by Julia Bell, is published by Parthian Books. You can buy it here: