The University of Iowa

Robin Hemley

Robin Hemley is the author of fourteen books, including the recently published Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, Penguin SE Asia). He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, former director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa, and Professor Emeritus of the Nonfiction Writing Program. He is the founder of NonfictioNOW (NonfictioNOW.org) and co-founder with Xu Xi of Authors at Large (aalauthors.com) and co-editor with Leila Philip of Speculative Nonfiction (Speculativenonfiction.org). He has taught workshops around the world and has had grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation as well as residencies at the Bellagio Center at Lake Como, The Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The MacDowell Colony, and elsewhere. His website is Robinhemley.com. You can follow him on Twitter @Robinhemley.

Instructor Events

Writing the Line between Autobiography and Fiction

Weeklong July 12 to July 17 2020
Instructor(s): 
Robin Hemley

In 1977, French novelist Serge Doubrovsky came up with the term “autofiction” to describe his novel, Fils. Exactly what autofiction is has been hotly debated, first in France and later in the U.S. and U.K. Autofiction is not simply another name for autobiographical fiction.