English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

This article explores my experience of undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing using as a starting point my own family history, with its inevitable gaps and unreliable memories. It outlines my reasons for adopting a hybrid structure that includes both fiction and nonfiction and situates the book that I subsequently published in the context of recent writing about the lives of so-called ordinary people by historians, biographers and autobiographers. I reflect on the feedback that I received on my work-in-progress from both historians and the writing community and suggest that their apparently contradictory recommendations to be either more emotional or more factual had the same underlying aim, to transform my writing into a recognisable genre that was not ‘just’ family history. The article describes briefly how self-publishing has democratised the publishing process and allowed me to remain true to my vision for my book. The recognition I have received as a writer about history leads me to hope that, similarly, collaboration between family historians and the academy can democratise the ways in which historical knowledge is acquired and disseminated.

Writing the Lives of Ordinary People—Opportunities and Challenges