Telling Tales ─ Autobiographies of Childhood and Youth

Young writers have historically played a pivotal role in shaping autobiographical genres and this continues into the graphic and digital texts which characterise contemporary life writing. This volume offers a selection of pertinent case studies which illuminate some of the core themes which have come to characterise autobiographical writings of childhood, including: cultural and identity representations and tensions, coming into knowledge and education, sexuality, prejudice, war, and trauma. The book also reveals preoccupations with the cultural forms of autobiographical writings of childhood and youth take, engaging in discussions of archives, graphic texts, digital forms, testimony, didacticism in autobiography and the anthologising of life writing. This collection will open up broader conversations about the scope of life writing about childhood and youth and the importance of life writing genres in prompting dialogues about literary cultures and coming of age.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Prose Studies.

Kylie Cardell is a Lecturer in the School of Humanities at Flinders University, Australia. She is the author of Dear World: Contemporary Uses of the Diary (2014).

Kate Douglas is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at Flinders University, Australia. She is the author of Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory (2010), and the co-editor (with Gillian Whitlock) of Trauma Texts (2009).