Biographical nonfiction

Here we are in February, the time of year when we throw ourselves back into writing the story of our life. The end of the year, with its deepening dark and circle of celebrations, distracts.

But now, we begin again, clawing our way through the relentlessness of the information cycle to a quiet rhythm of shaping words, and asking fundamental questions: What is a memoir? How is it different from biography, and how are both related to that thing called narrative nonfiction?

Biographical nonfiction definition

Here’s my take on it:

Memoir is a story based on your life experience and what you have learned from it.

It is a winnowing of all that has happened into a tight view of a slim section of experience: the coming of age years; the head-spinning start of a career; early motherhood.

But always, it is a winnowing of the vast, complicated arc of events that has constituted your life. Narrow, narrow, narrow. Find one series of events that linked together explores some vulnerable and pressing universality o