Life in Biography: Observations on writing about lives

In the final Biography Workshop of 2024, historian and author Eileen Chanin will discuss the slipperiness of writing about lives: the challenges, frustrations, pleasures, and results.

Eileen Chanin documents lives and writes and publishes widely. She is a senior Visiting Fellow of King’s College London and a Research Associate of the Humanities Research Centre and the Australian Studies Institute at the ANU. Her book Degenerates and Perverts won the NSW Premier's History Award Australian History Prize, and she has been shortlisted for both the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and the Magarey Medal for Biography. Her latest title, The Strand: A Biography, will be released in February 2025. Commissioned by Manchester University Press, it is the first narrative this century of the life of London’s famous street.