Personal

A personal biographer turns one life into one book, and that is the whole of the job. The work here covers memoirs, oral histories and life story writing for people who are not famous and do not need to be. The subject is a parent, a grandparent, a neighbour, a self.

What marks these books is the source: memory, interviews, letters, a voice recorded over months. The result is read by a handful of people who already know the subject, and that changes how the story is told.

Personal biography work sits close to family history and to professional profiles, and the difference shows in the shape of the finished book. A family history follows a line, a set of ancestors, a surname. A professional profile sells a career. The listings here take one life as the whole subject, told in the first person or close to it. Book of My Life and Writing Your Life work from prompts and memory, so the subject supplies the material and the structure follows the order of a life rather than a family tree. Share Your Life Story and Story Trust lean on interviews, which suits people who would rather talk than write. Trena Cleland and Paul Fenn are named biographers who do that listening and shaping. Bound Biographies, Life Story Writer, Private Historian, Real Life Stories and Writing Cabin serve the same reader: someone who wants a personal biographer to turn a single life into a book that stays inside the family.