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Call for Papers
International Conference ‘Authors as Characters in Fiction, Film and Graphic Narratives’
12-13 March 2026 91 Avenue de la Libération
Submission guidelines: We invite proposals for individual papers or panels. Please submit paper proposals (which should include the title of the paper, author(s), a 250-300-word abstract, institutional affiliation, contact information and a short bio-bibliography) before 1st September 2025, to the following address: idea-authors-as-characters-contact@univ-lorraine.fr. A selection of articles will be published in 2027. Acceptance will be notified by 1st October 2025.
Keynote Speakers:
The great paradox of the modern age appears to be that, since Roland Barthes announced the ‘death of the Author’, there has never been so much fascination with authorial figures, tangible in fiction, film and graphic narratives. The aim of this international and interdisciplinary conference is to understand the fetishisation of English-speaking canonical authors (such as William Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Sylvia Plath, Mary Shelley, D. H. Lawrence, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway), the ‘versioning’ (Silver xvi) of their texts and images, the fabrication of myths which are ‘endlessly repeated and woven into culture’ (Miller xiii), the relationship between auctoriality and celebrity, and artistic and historiographic representations. Notable contributions to the field have been Paul Franssen and Ton Hoenselaars’s The Author as Character: Representing Historical Writers in Western Literature (1999), Hila Shachar’s Screening the Author: The Literary Biopic (2019) and Bethany Layne’s Biofiction and Writers’ Afterlives (2020). However, much work remains to be done on literary biopics, especially the pre-postmodern productions of this type, including in the classic age of cinema. Despite notable exceptions such as Lucia Boldrini’s 2024 symposium, the question of authors as characters in graphic narratives has not been sufficiently explored.
This conference will take place over two days and will explore three main generic perspectives: Biofiction. According to Michael Lackey’s widely accepted definition, biofiction is ‘literature that names its protagonist after an actual biographical figure’ (‘Locating’ 3); it takes advantage of the writing techniques of the novel to present the ‘evidence-based discourse of biography’ (Lodge, The Year of Henry James 8). This genre ‘has become a very fashionable form of literary fiction’ (Lodge, The Year of Henry James 8) in the last decades, and in recent years has become the subject of Biofiction Studies, a dynamic scholarly discipline that has ‘finally emancipated itself from both historical fiction and life writing and has chartered a narrative space uniquely its own’ (Lackey, ‘Narrative Space’ 3). Critics have chiselled the features of the genre even more finely to suggest that it deals precisely with an author who becomes a character in fiction, leading to the notion of ‘author fiction’ (Fokkema, ‘The Author’ 39; Savu 9), or the genre of ‘author as character’ (Franssen and Hoenselaars 11). Contemporary biofictionalists reimagine writers at work, deploy the subjects-writers’ own literary techniques and reproduce their stylistic signature: literary biofiction is therefore an imaginative appropriation of the literature as well as of the life of a past iconic writer. Biopics. According to Tom Brown and Belén Vidal, a biopic is ‘a fiction film that deals with a figure whose existence is documented in history, and whose claims to fame or notoriety warrant the uniqueness of his or her story’ (3). A biopic uses both historical facts and the screenwriter’s imagination to depict memorable scenes in the lives of famous historical figures. The biopic arguably mirrors today’s celebrity culture. The genesis and plot of the writer-character’s books are often woven into the cinematographic narratives of their lives. Biopics raise a specific challenge: how to translate the writer’s prose into moving images in a way that is entertaining to watch, to pay homage to the writer’s aesthetics? Scholarship on writers’ biopics (Buchanan, Frus, Henke, Jardonnet, and Wilson) has tended to examine the intermedial relationship between the author’s writing and the film narrative, as well as allusions to the writer’s life and oeuvre scattered throughout the biopic’s plot. Other scholars (e.g. Stetz) propose an altogether different approach by focusing not on the literariness but on the social and political status of the writer as a disruptive force, a critical commentator of the developments of their own era. Such scholars examine the biopic’s appropriation of the writer to make a transhistorical commentary on current contemporary issues. Graphic biofiction. The convergence between the graphic medium and the genre of biography has been examined (McCloud, Kuhlman, and the 2024 online symposium organised by Lucia Boldrini). Other questions, however, remain unexplored, such as what, exactly, this new genre adds to biofiction, through its distinctive combination of textual information and visual representational strategies. Scholarly reflections must keep abreast of today’s rich production of ‘graphic biofictions’, a genre which encompasses a variety of art forms, branching out as far as Japanese manga. The graphic dimension may be anchored both in archival images and a pictorial tradition, and bears the specific stamp of the illustrator. The conference will seek to analyse the historical and geographical developments of the genre, besides the visual specificities of graphic narratives about writers. These art forms question the relationships between the factual and the fictional, the documentary and the imagined, and, notably, the textual and the visual. The graphic perspective of this conference will further our understanding of the complexity of the notion of authorship through the unique and subjective adaptations of writers’ lives to the visual medium. Biofictionalists employ various narrative techniques and have different aesthetic or political aims. One such method is appropriating a writer’s oeuvre, tropes and style along with their life. This calls for a redefinition of intertextuality (Kristeva), recycling (Latham et al.) and appropriation and adaptation (Sanders) in different textual, cinematographic and graphic contexts. Many biofictions include paratextual addenda and thought-provoking metabiofictional comments on the ethics of the genre, which are worth examining as creative authors express arguments in favour of their creative endeavours. Of particular interest are biofictions about writers whose stories are obliquely told by minor or peripheral characters who share their lives – spouses, lovers, friends, or servants – and shed a specific light on well-known events. These particular strategies confer the genre with endless flexibility, originality and opportunities to renew itself, and enable contemporary writers and artists to create new forms of art celebrating the past lives of canonical authors.
Participants are welcome to consider particular case studies and can address the following general questions:
The interdisciplinary conference will foster a dialogue between different fields: literary studies, cultural studies, film studies, intermedial studies and visual culture studies. We would like papers to address the topic of authors as characters in fiction, film and graphic narratives from the perspectives of production and reception. Lucasta Miller has defined ‘afterlife studies’ as ‘a form of critical enquiry which can interrogate the intersection between real lives and their cultural construction, both within the lifetime of the subject and posthumously’ (263). The current abundance of author-as-character productions provides an opportunity to redefine the emerging critical concept of ‘literary afterlives’ as past authorial figures continue to be transposed to new literary, visual and cultural contexts, and their past oeuvres are repurposed to be consumed by new audiences. The continuous reinvention of authors as characters in fiction, film and graphic narratives reinforces their canonical literary status, rejuvenates critical interpretations and augments their cultural capital in the twenty-first century.
Conference venue: Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France.
Organising committee:
Advisory board:
Bibliography
On Biofiction Banks, Russel. ‘The Truth Contract in the Biographical Novel’. Truthful Fictions: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists. Ed. Michael Lackey. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 43-56. Barthes, Roland. ‘The Death of the Author’. Image Music Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. 142-148. Boldrini, Lucia. Autobiographies of Others: Historical Subjects and Literary Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2012. Fokkema, Aleid. ‘The Author: Postmodernism’s Stock Character’. The Author as Character: Representing Historical Writers in Western Literature. Eds. Paul Franssen and Ton Hoenselaars. London: Associated University Presses, 1999. 39-51. Franssen, Paul, and Ton Hoenselaars, eds. The Author as Character: Representing Historical Writers in Western Literature. London: Associated University Presses, 1999. Jacobs, Naomi. The Character of Truth: Historical Figures in Contemporary Fiction. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. Kristeva, Julia. ‘Word, Dialogue, and the Novel’. In T. Moi ed., The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. 35-61. Lackey, Michael. Biofiction. London: Routledge, 2021. —. ‘Introduction: A Narrative Space of its Own’. Biographical Fiction: A Reader. Ed. Michael Lackey. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. 1-15. —. ‘Locating and Defining the Bio in Biofiction’. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 31, no. 1, 2016. 3-10. —, ed. ‘Biofiction’. American Book Review, vol. 39, no. 1, 2017, 3-30. —, ed. Biographical Fiction: A Reader. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Latham, Monica, Caroline Marie and Anne-Laure Rigeade. Recycling Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Art and Literature. London: Routledge, 2021. Layne, Bethany, ed. Biofiction and Writers’ Afterlives. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020. Lodge, David. The Year of Henry James. London: Vintage, 2014. Mayer, Sandra and Julia Novak. Life Writing and Celebrity: Exploring Intersections. London: Routledge, 2020. Middeke, Martin. ‘Introduction’. Biofictions: The Retelling of Romantic Lives in Contemporary Fiction and Drama. Eds. Martin Middeke and Werner Huber, Rochester: Camden House, 1999, 1-26. Miller, Lucasta. ‘Lives and Afterlives: The Brontë Myth Revisited’. Brontë Studies, vol. 39, no. 4, 2014, 254-266. Parey, Armelle and Charlotte Wadoux. ‘Writers and Writing in Neo-Victorian Media’. Neo-Victorian Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2024, 1-17. Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge, 2015. Savu, Laura E. Postmortem Postmodernists: The Afterlife of the Author in Recent Narrative. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009. Silver, Brenda. Virginia Woolf Icon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Sellers, Susan. ‘Postmodernism and the Biographical Novel’. Conversations with Biographical Novelists: Truthful Fictions across the Globe. Ed. Michael Lackey. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 207-221. Semple, Edel and Ronan Hatfull, eds. Shakespearean Biofiction on the Contemporary Stage and Screen. London: Bloomsbury, 2024.
On Biopics Brown, Tom and Belén Vidal, eds. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture. New York: Routledge, 2014. Buchanan, Judith, ed. The Writer on Film. Screening Literary Authorship. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2013. Cartmell, Deborah and Ashley D. Polasek. ‘Introduction’. A Companion to the Biopic. Eds. Deborah Cartmell and Ashley D. Polasek. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2019. 1-10. Custen, George. Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Frus, Phyllis. ‘The Figure in the Landscape: Capote and Infamous’. Journal of Popular Film and Television. Eds. Carolyn Anderson and Jonathan Lupo, vol. 36, no. 2, 2008. 52‑60. Hollinger, Karen. Biopics of Women. London: Routledge, 2020. Piper, Melanie. The Biopic and Beyond: Celebrities as Characters in Screen Media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Polaschek, Bronwyn. The Postfeminist Biopic: Narrating the Lives of Plath, Kahlo, Woolf and Austen. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. Shachar, Hila. Screening the Author: The Literary Biopic. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. Stetz, Margaret D. ‘Oscar Wilde at the Movies: British Sexual Politics and The Green Carnation (1960)’. Biography. Ed. Glenn Man, vol. 23, no. 1, Winter 2000. 90‑107. Vidal, Belén. ‘Introduction: The Biopic and its Critical Contexts’. The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture. Eds. Tom Brown and Belén Vidal. New York: Routledge, 2014. 140-158.
On Graphic Biofiction Baetens, Jan and Hugo Frey, eds. The Graphic Novel: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Blank, Juliane. ‘Adaptation’. Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives. Eds. Sebastian Domsch, Dan Hassler-Forest and Dirk Vanderbeke, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021. 141-166. Böger, Astrid. ‘Life Writing’. Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives. Eds. Sebastian Domsch, Dan Hassler-Forest and Dirk Vanderbeke, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021. 201-218. Chaney, Michael A. Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011. Chute, Hillary L. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Gardner, Jared. ‘Autobiography’s Biography, 1972-2007’. Biography, vol. 31, no. 1, 2008. 1‑26. Kuhlman, Martha. ‘The Autobiographical and Biographical Graphic Novel’. The Cambridge Companion to the Graphic Novel. Ed. Stephen E. Tabachnick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 113-129. Marie, Caroline and Xavier Giudicelli. ‘Portraits d’auteurs : l’écrivain mis en images’. Portraits d’auteurs: l’écrivain mis en images. Eds. Caroline Marie and Xavier Giudicelli, no. 12, 2020. 11-20. Vanderbeke, Dirk. ‘History, Formats, Genres’. Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives. Eds. Sebastian Domsch, Dan Hassler-Forest and Dirk Vanderbeke. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021. 35-80. |
