“Auto/Biography across the Americas: Reading beyond Geographic and Cultural Divides” was the scholarly summit that started it all.

The Autobiography Society and its academic journal, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies convened this conference in 2013 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

We hosted thirty autobiography studies scholars from all over the Americas—Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America—who spent four days discussing themes, genres, and methodologies from their diverse geographic and cultural perspectives and forged international, cross-disciplinary research collaborations.

This meeting produced huge rewards: a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, an edited scholarly book (forthcoming from Routledge), and  the International Auto/Biography Studies Association—Chapter of the Americas, which met for the second time in June 2015 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, USA (hosted by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson).