[Vwoolf] Last Call CFP for Woolf Miscellany Biofiction Special Issue

Michael Lackey lacke010 at morris.umn.edu
Sun Feb 26 11:41:11 EST 2017


*Virginia Woolf Miscellany *CFP

Biofiction, literature that names its protagonist after an actual
historical figure, has become a dominant literary form in recent
years.  Margaret
Atwood, J.M. Coetzee, Joyce Carol Oates, Colum McCann, Colm Tóibín, Peter
Carey, and Hilary Mantel are just a few luminaries who have authored
spectacular biographical novels and won major awards, including the
Pulitzer Prize, the Man Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle
Award, the Pen/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Award.  With regard to
the rise and legitimization of biofiction, Michael Cunningham’s *The Hours*
is a crucial text not just because it won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction but
also because it features Virginia Woolf as a character. Since the
publication of *The Hours *in 1998, there have been numerous biographical
novels about Woolf, including Gillian Freeman’s *But Nobody Lives in
Bloomsbury* (2006), Susan Sellers’ *Vanessa and Virginia* (2009), Priya
Parmar’s *Vanessa and her Sister* (2015), Norah Vincent’s *Adeline* (2015),
and Maggie Gee’s *Virginia Woolf in Manhattan* (2015).  While there have
been multiple novels about other historical figures, such as Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson, Nat Turner, Eliza Lynch, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Henry James, and Katherine Mansfield, it appears that Woolf has
inspired the most and some of the best biographical novels.

This is ironic, because while Woolf is known for bending and blending
genres, she was never able to imagine her way to the biographical novel—she
certainly came close in *Orlando*, which is not a biographical novel
because she does not name the protagonist Vita, and *Flush*, which fits the
definition of a classical historical novel rather than a biographical novel.
However, Woolf’s theoretical approach to imaginative biography (voiced
especially in her essays “The New Biography” [1927] and “The Art of
Biography” [1939], prompted by Harold Nicolson’s and Lytton Strachey’s
contemporary biographical productions), encouraged writers to push the
Victorian limits of the genre and explore new (“odd”) possibilities. Her
discussions on the new directions and liberties that biography took at the
beginning of the twentieth century has certainly paved the way for the
current postmodernist literary genre of biofiction.

The *Virginia Woolf Miscellany* seeks submissions about Woolf, Bloomsbury,
and biofiction.  Questions to consider include: To what degree has Woolf’s
work inspired aesthetic developments that led to the rise and
legitimization of contemporary biofiction? What in Woolf’s life makes her
particularly suited as a protagonist of biofiction? How does contemporary
biofiction give us new access to Woolf, her family and friends, and
Bloomsbury?  How do contemporary biofictions challenge and reimagine
traditional ways of thinking about Woolf’s life and works?  How is Woolf’s
work and life used in biofiction to advance ways of thinking that even
Woolf could not have imagined? Is it ethical to use Woolf’s life in a
contemporary novel?  Can an author simply make things up about an actual
historical figure such as Woolf?  And is it ethical for an author to alter
facts about a person’s life in order to communicate what is considered a
more important “truth”?  These are just a few questions the rise of
biofictions about Woolf raise.  Please feel free to generate and answer
your own set of questions.

Submissions should be no longer than 2500 words.  Send inquiries and
submissions to Michael Lackey (lacke010 at morris.umn.edu) or Todd Avery (
Todd_Avery at uml.edu) by July 15, 2017.  Publication is slated for the
Spring/Summer 2018
issue.
-- 
Michael Lackey
Distinguished McKnight University Professor
University of Minnesota, Morris
104 Humanities Building
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267-2132
320-589-6263
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