Public Lecture: ‘On Life-Writing (Part II): Hermione Lee and Kate Kennedy in Conversation’

Public Lecture:

On Life-Writing (Part II):

 Hermione Lee and Kate Kennedy in Conversation

What is Life-writing?

Life-writing takes many forms — from biography and autobiography to letters, memoirs, and creative experiments that blur the line between fact and fiction. But what happens when we, as biographers and life-writers, get too close? In this conversation, Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee explore the intricate dance between writer and subject—between ‘your story, your quest’ and our own desire for invisibility. Drawing on readings and reflections from their own work—from the beginning of Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound to the endings of Virginia Woolf and Tom Stoppard: A Life—they ask: how involved can life-writers be? What biographers do with identification, emotion, and the inevitable gaps and mysteries that resist discovery? With warmth, humour, and self-awareness, they consider the risks and rewards of over-involvement, and the strange psychodrama that lies at the heart of every act of biography.

This event is the second in a two-part series that introduces some of the major questions animating contemporary life‑writing. Be sure to join us for Part I, when Kate Kennedy sits down with Elleke Boehmer to discuss the boundaries between memory and invention, truth and storytelling, in contemporary life writing.

Speaker Details:

Hermione Lee was President of Wolfson College from 2008 to 2017 and is Emeritus Professor of English Literature in the English Faculty at Oxford University. She is a biographer and critic whose work includes biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2006), Penelope Fitzgerald (2013), and Tom Stoppard (2020). She has also written books on Elizabeth Bowen, Philip Roth, and Willa Cather, an OUP Very Short Introduction to Biography, and a collection of essays on life-writing, Body Parts. She was awarded the Biographers’ Club Prize for Exceptional Contribution to Biography in 2018. From 1998 to 2008, she was the Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature at Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2023 she was made GBE for services to English Literature. She founded OCLW at Wolfson College in 2011. She is currently working on a biography of Anita Brookner.

Dr Kate Kennedy is a writer, cellist, and BBC broadcaster. Her work combines words and music, in performance, on the radio, and on the page. She is a Research Fellow in Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Her most recent book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound (2024) is part memoir, part biography, and her previous biography Dweller in Shadows (2021) explored the life of British poet-composer Ivor Gurney. She is a regular presenter for BBC Radio.

Further Details and Contacts:

After the event, join us for a book signing/sale by Caper* and a complimentary wine reception. 

This event is free and open to all; however, registration is recommended.

This is an in-person event, but it will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.

Registration will close at 14:30 on 20 October 2025.

Any queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson. 

*Caper is an independent family bookshop, activity, and event space in East Oxford. They have a range of books for children, a curated selection of great books for grown-ups, and a number of interesting and beautiful cookbooks. They offer storytime, art, music, and cookery workshops for children, author visits, and regular book talks in the evenings.