This module introduces theories and texts of life writing, autofiction, fictional autobiography and writing as a ‘singular voice’ from a variety of contexts. The politics of early autobiography will be examined with reference to Juan Francisco Manzano’s  The Life and Poems of a Cuban Slave; we will discuss Helene Cixous’ ‘écriture féminine’ and Clarice Lispector’s work which inspired it; Barthes’ ‘The Death of the Author’ will be used to think through issues surrounding the work of the pseudonymical Elena Ferrante; texts and theories of ‘autofiction’ by Serge Doubrovsky will be compared to subsequent trends in fictional autobiography including examining Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub as a means to engage with Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of writing as a ‘singular voice’.