HKU Writing Studio
To “tell” a life story is always about love.
The act of attention is an act of love.
What is Life Writing?
It is a sustained attention paid, where we open the eye a little wider for a little longer, as Donald Revell explains, to someone’s life. On a lens opened wide with attention, we let in unexpected light. We give, as G. Thomas Couser suggests, “focus and form,” where there was otherwise less attention, less complexity. Lives are multidimensional. Whitman says, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” To tell a life story, whether one’s own in memoir or another’s in biography, is also, then, to tell at least two life stories. All life writing leaves the author’s trace abounding, based on hundreds of decisions and frames in the act of shaping and making it. No definition of life writing is stable, making the iterations and work of “telling” a life compelling, ever-calling. Life writing is the very act of revising and revisiting one’s own life at the same time what we explore more, learn more, in “telling” a life. All the Life Stories on these pages reveal an exceptional attention paid: a close gaze and the trace of a Life Writer’s fingerprint. Some of the Life Stories are memoirs, and some are biographical life stories. In every story, we see unique portraits coming alive, through writing and video. Without these Life Writers’ hard work, research and heart, we would never know or hear each of these lives in just this way, and at this level of command and care. Welcome to our HKU Life Writing Studio!
What is Life Writing?
It is a sustained attention paid, where we open the eye a little wider for a little longer, as Donald Hall explains, to someone’s life. On a lens opened wide with attention, we let in unexpected light. We give, as G. Thomas Couser suggests, “focus and form,” where there was otherwise less attention, less complexity. Lives are multidimensional.
Whitman says, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” To tell a life story, whether one’s own in memoir or another’s in biography, is also, then, to tell at least two life stories. All life writing leaves the author’s trace abounding, based on hundreds of decisions and frames in the act of shaping and making it. No definition of life writing is stable, making the iterations and work of “telling” a life compelling, ever-calling. Life writing is the very act of revising and revisiting one’s own life at the same time what we explore more, learn more, in “telling” a life.
All the Life Stories on these pages reveal an exceptional attention paid: a close gaze and the trace of a Life Writer’s fingerprint. Some of the Life Stories are memoirs, and some are biographical life stories. In every story, we see unique portraits coming alive, through writing and video. Without these Life Writers’ hard work, research and heart, we would never know or hear each of these lives in just this way, and at this level of command and care.
Welcome to our HKU Life Writing Studio!
Read the Stories
Recent
Writing Submissions
Heart and Discovery
Your heart and love of discovery will guide you to discover the life story you are aching to tell.
Casting a Light
You are giving your readers the magic of casting light on a life that you yourself want to know more in the first instance too.
That life may be your own life, looking back or looking ahead; or another's life, whether someone in your family, or a friend's, or the story of someone who makes you feel huge curiosity, whether that "someone" is a person you know, someone you are researching, an animal you have come to know, a famous person you always wanted to understand from your own perspective; or a group of people over time.
Life in Context
Always, a life is in the context of other lives: once you open your life story you are exploring more about a time, a place, cultures, histories, food, affinities, preferences, and contradictions too!
Length
Your Life Story may be any length, short or long.
Font
Please be sure to submit your life story in 12-font, whether Times New Roman, Cambria, Arial or any other non-cursive and clear font.
Line Spacing
Please be sure to submit your written work with either 1.5 line spacing, or double spacing. Also make sure that your pages are enumerated.
Multi-Media Options
You may also choose to submit Life Stories that are multi-media: for instance a written work along with a companion video/documentary; or a drama/screenplay featuring the story of a life that deeply moves you.
Cover Letter
Attached to your Life Story, please submit a cover letter. The cover letter, including your name, contact email, and title of your Life Story, can include the inspiration for writing and submitting your Life Story; your passion to tell this Life Story at this time; inspirations from other writers who, for you, have paved a path for your own work, and more!
We are collecting new Life Stories for potential inclusion here at the Writer's Studio.
Before you submit:
You may want to read and re-read some of your favourite Life Stories, to glean the many shapes and sizes long-form Life Stories can take.
For example, have you loved reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, or Tash Aw's The Face: Strangers on the Pier?
And have you found favourites among beautiful short-form life writing stories, humorous and heart-bending ones, such as these: "Dreads" by Alice Walker; or Jayson Greene's "Children Don't Always Live"; or Life Stories by Hong Kong Writers on this Writing Studio's website, by Beverly Leung, Suski Gurung, Nelson Ho, Candy Chow, Henry Lee, or Kimberly Cheung?
Be sure to research your Life Story carefully. The Life Story sensitively "tells" someone's life, whether in memoir or the biographical, and the revelation may be the life of a fellow human being or the life of a group of people or team, the life of a beloved animal or the life of a family.
That act of agency by a writer is a powerful one. So be sure you have gathered all your details, as you now edit and polish your work, making decisions that reflect this extraordinary awareness: as the writer, you both hold a mirror to, and interrupt, a life, in the very act of "telling" and shaping it, making infinite choices in the act of revealing and breathing new life into it for your readers. Have you found just the balance that you want? Can you already feel the life you are writing about alive on the page?
Be sure to interview and/or pay close attention to every detail of your chosen source for your Life Writing story: yourself (memoir) or someone else (biography)! This is an act of love: taking such care to learn more, open more, explore the life and the contexts of that life, which help you to bring that life story to life for us!
Once you have gone back and revised your work before submission, and it's ready to go---look now to the next guidelines for submitting your Life Story.
If you have any questions, write any time to:
Page Richards
[email protected]
Director, HKU Writer's Studio
Writer and Professor, HKU School of English
We can’t wait to see your new life stories, pouring in to the HKU Life Writing Studio!