Evening Lab | Autofiction: The Bad Genre

Autofiction is difficult to define, and might be considered the ‘bad’ genre, as a result. It is a term used to describe writers from Proust to Annie Ernaux and Edouard Louis via Constance Debré and Rachel Cusk. For Serge Doubrovsky, autofiction is a hybrid of fiction and autobiography, what happened to the writer and what can be imagined : “Fiction of strictly real events or facts; the autofiction, if you like, of having entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of language, outside the wisdom of the novel, be it traditional or new.'

Join us for this one-hour Zoom workshop to unearth autofiction, examine its complexities and avant-garde vibe. We’ll be experimenting, writing and getting inventive with this liberating genre, allowing us to write the self and the selves we make up. Come along to shape up your personal narrative ideas, get inspired, rock the world and be bad!

No experience necessary: start a new piece of writing, experiment, or find ways to enrich a work in progress.

All are welcome, whether you are a paid subscriber or not (50% discount to paid subscribers). 

Thursday 2nd April, 6pm GMT.

A recording will be available to ticket holders for ten days after the workshop.

Reading material will be supplied via email beforehand.

Discount

Paid subscribers to The Writing Laboratory Substack receive a 50% discount for this event. A paid subscription also provides access our online Accountability Club at £6 a month, or £45 a year. You can sign up here.

Your Tutor

Susanna Crossman is an essayist and award-winning fiction writer. Her acclaimed memoir, Home is Where We Start: Growing Up In The Fallout of The Utopian Dream, was published by Fig Tree, Penguin, in 2024 and will be published by Heliotrope Books (US) in 2026. Her new novel, The Orange Notebooks, was out in 2025 (Bluemoose Books, UK and Assembly Press, NA). She has recent work in Aeon, The Guardian, Paris Review, Vogue, Neue Rundschau and more. A published novelist in France, she regularly collaborates with artists. When she’s not writing, she works on three continents as a mentor, lecturer and clinical arts-therapist.