Biography and Memoir have always filled vital needs for a range of readers—escapism, education, inspiration, and a crucial source of material for historians and other writers. Our fascination with lives in other times and places ensures the genre's wide appeal.

Join Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett and Roger Porter as they discuss why authors turn to autobiography and memoir, and what one does in the role of biographer and of critic, as they interview each other about their work.

Kimberly Hartnett is the author of Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights. Roger Porter is the author of Self-Same Songs: Autobiographical Performances and Reflections.

The program is presented in conjunction with OJMCHE's exhibit Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist, on loan from the International Center for Photography. The prolific Gruber has written biography, autobiography and memoir, an astonishing feat for a woman also acclaimed for her photojournalistic coverage of the Soviet Arctic, Siberian gulag, Holocaust survivors and the plight of refugees aboard the ship Exodus 1947.

About the Speakers

Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett is the author of Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights (UNC Press, 2015). She spent many years as a newspaper reporter and editor in New England and the Pacific Northwest, most recently at The Seattle Times. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Roger Porter is Professor Emeritus at Reed College, and the author of several books on Autobiography and Memoir, including Self-Same Songs: Autobiographical Representations and Reflections and Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers. Most recently he has co-edited Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing.