Some proponents of the new “moi criticism” began writing full-fledged academic autobiographies,

People came to the writing school with unbearably sad stories, about children who had died, about surviving rape and suicide attempts, about addictions or parents who never loved them. Often they hoped to turn their own story into something that could be published, perhaps without realizing that also meant turning it into a package, a product that

flowering of memoir writing, including such classics as Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club and Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius—works