Review Introduction

The following cluster of three reviews of recent studies related to the areas of life writing, appear in esc in simultaneous publication with their online publication on the website of the Life Writing and Graduate Student New Scholar Network (sns) of the International Auto/Biography Association (iaba). The sns, launched in September 2014, is a network of emerging scholars dedicated to facilitating intercollegiate and international discourse and collaboration in life writing practice and scholarship. Since then, the Public Dialogues interview series, Conversations blog, an active social media presence, and a series of roundtable events have established a growing, diverse fellowship of emerging scholars interested in all aspects of life writing. The sns network has launched Writing Back, an interdisciplinary review series focusing on book-length academic scholarship related to life writing. In accordance with the network’s mandate, Writing Back seeks to introduce the voices of emerging scholars in conversations that revolve around life narrative research and practice, as well as promote engaged and critical readership of these topics among a wider audience. These three reviews by new scholars Samantha Balzer, Richard Moran, and Sarah McRae are the first sns network reviews to appear in esc, and do so on the initiative of Orly Lael Netzer and Meredith Snyder, two of the sns contacts for Canada and the Americas.