When Readers Tell Authors Their Personal Stories

2009

This chapter provides a case-study example of narrative interviewing. It discusses the Biographical Narrative Interpretive Approach and ethical aspects of narrative interviews.

Ride-the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 2005

Presenting a story of an ill person, in comparison to a description of illness, as well as activating a narrative approach toward this person increased the probability in subjects of helping behaviour*/ in this case the promise of donations of bone marrow for leukaemia patients or willingness to spend time on soliciting money for other people's medical treatment. A higher general ability in narrative interpretation strengthens the above effects. Results of other studies may suggest the kind of factors responsible for these effects. The data show that narrative modes of social data processing increase the subject's internal coherency of the target person and their ability to visualise the target. It also increases the complexity of the subject's impression, as well as his/her feeling of the adequacy of that impression and the distinction of the target person from the social background. The data further suggest that the narrative mode results in greater attention to the person's motivation and emotions, better empathic understanding of this person as well as higher emotional involvement in this person's problems. Participants of drama interpret facts within a narrative framework and learn to use this framework. The above results therefore provide argument for the constructive role of drama experiences in personal and social life.

Poetics Today, 2014

This annotated bibliography offers an overview of various types of sources that may be useful for the study of the literary interview, that is, the interview about literature that features a writer (either as interviewee or as interviewer). First of all, we have selected a number of studies dealing with interviews in general or in nonliterary contexts, especially in the popular media, in research (e.g., social sciences, anthropology, oral history), and in the arts (e.g., visual and performance arts). This selection includes only those works that are in our view useful to the study of the literary interview. Second, we have collected studies of the literary interview itself from a more general theoretical or comparative approach in English, French, and German scholarship. The third section contains studies of the literary interview within a specific context. This primarily means within some linguistic and cultural tradition but also within a specific historical period, a journal, or a body of literary interviews given by a particular author or conducted by the same interviewer. In the fourth part we offer a selection of primary sources, that is, collections, series, journals, and online sources of literary interviews in English, French, and German. This selection includes neither books of interviews with individual authors nor an exhaustive list of literary and other journals that feature interviews.

The Interview: An Ethnographic Approach, 2012

This chapter critically explores the autobiographical narrative method developed by the German sociologist Fritz Schütze. We shall argue that the methodology can help to uncover domains of psycho-social experience that may be hard to reveal using other interviewing techniques. The method includes a close analysis of interview transcriptions, distinguishing particular textual, performative and affective dimensions of self narration. It can provide valuable insights into the ways in which personal experiences and emotional trajectories, partially shaped by kinship dynamics, socio-economic and political processes, can influence identity development and the formation of life attitudes. As will become clear in this chapter, the method also frequently generates a useful reflective space for interviewees, allowing them to express, communicate and work through painful or confusing past experiences. This is less likely to happen using structured and semi-structured interview techniques, where frequent questions by the interviewer can hamper a process of deep inner reflection.

Poetics Today, 2016

This article explores the literary functions of the author interview in all types of media (printed or broadcast, single or collected interviews). It claims that the literariness of the interview resides in the conversational exchange that takes place during the interview, in the way the interlocutors handle the question and answer form typical of media interviews. Through struggle for the interview's control but also through cooperation, the interviewer and interviewee produce a physical, psychological, and intellectual portrait of the interviewee. Literariness is also manifest in the written account of the interview, where the interviewer gains control of the interview by imposing his or her style on the narrative up to the point where it becomes his or her own oeuvre. Finally, the literariness of the author interview is featured in large interview collections through the mapping of the literary field and literary history.

Zane Goebel (Ed.), Rapport and the Discursive Co-Construction of Social Relations in Fieldwork Encounters, (pp. 163-184). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton., 2019

Recent studies on the research interview are concerned to move away from the traditional conception of interview as information gathering in which the interviewer has the upper hand while the interviewee merely supplies information, toward considering interviewee-interviewer relationship in terms of mutual participation in interactional events. Interviews successfully conducted as interactional events have been shown to acquire a blended quality reflecting the practices of both interview and conversation. Following such a lead, this study examines interviews with authors of Indonesian Teenlit, focusing on early sequences of talk to show how rapport is built moment-by-moment in interaction. Rapport is considered here in terms of trust building, which may be achieved in one sequence of talk but may dissipate in another in light of face threatening acts. The analysis is presented in two parts. The first part focuses on how interviewees treat the interviewer's disfluency as an opportunity to take an active role in information sharing and knowledge claiming. In the second part, I examine interaction beyond introductory sequences to show how interview participants engage in mutual claim making as a way of enhancing rapport. This study underlines the point that rapport is a continuous process requiring negotiation of knowledge and a search for convergences through acts of alignment. .

This qualitative study examines how semi-structured interviews shape coming-out narratives by studying interactions between a gay Greek American interviewee and a gay Asian interviewer. It analyzes coming-out components: self-acceptance and disclosure. The research uncovers cultural nuances as the interviewee shifts from self-disclosure to addressing others. Awareness of the study's scope and interviewer cues influences narrative direction, highlighting the interview context's role in shaping narratives. This interactional approach contributes to understanding interviews as narrative-shaping contexts, offering insights into the communicative process of coming out. Findings extend to broader narrative production studies, demonstrating how cultural norms and interpersonal dynamics shape storytelling.

2015

Brothers and Sisters (2009) and written a memoir on food and cooking, Love and Hunger (2012). I have long been a fan of Charlotte's work, and was delighted when I learned in 2013 that she was beginning a new online subscription magazine, The Writer's Room, which would contain interviews with her fellow writers. This was particularly exciting since it was at this time we were exploring the establishment of what would become Writers in Conversation. I subscribed immediately and have found the Writer's Room interviews unfailingly illuminating-essential reading for creative writers and anyone seriously interested in the craft of writing. Details of Charlotte's publications are at http://www.charlottewood.com.au/ and The Writer's Room subscription page is http://www.charlottewood.com.au/store/p27/2015_Subscription_The_Writer%27s_Room_Interviews.ht ml When Writers in Conversation was established, Charlotte kindly agreed to join the Advisory Board. It seemed clear that we shared a commitment to the long-form literary interview, so earlier this year I decided to ask Charlotte if she would agree to an interview for WIC. We spoke on the phone in May 2015. I began by quoting a passage from Charlotte's Writer's Room Interview with Sue Smith: 'I love these interviews I do with writers, you know, because just about Wood-2-Dooley Interviewing the Interviewer: A Conversation with Charlotte Wood. Gillian Dooley.

2019

Interviewing has become a major method in studies of reading, as in audience and reception studies more broadly, but it is rarely reflected upon beyond brief methodological discussions in individual articles and books. This Themed Section brings together a sample of recent and current projects which use interviews to investigate readingincluding the reading of books, newspapers, and comics, in social and individual situations. It brings together different approaches to collecting and analysing readers' talk about reading, through a series of studies which foreground readers' narratives. To frame the articles historically and to draw out connections between them, this Introduction traces a history of investigating and interviewing 'ordinary readers'-and audiences more broadly-and considers some disciplinary contexts and methodological implications of this practice. It is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to the methodology of interviewing but rather a means of beginning to reflect on where we have been and are now with interviewing readers, and on the limitations and possibilities of talking about reading. We also argue that interviews have come to challenge disciplinary assumptions about reading and readers. Our overall aim is to encourage the examination of a single meeting point in the entangled interdisciplinarity of research into reading.

2013

Research interviews are a form of interaction jointly constructed by the interviewer and interviewee, what Silverman (2001: 104) calls ‘interview-as-local-accomplishment’. From this perspective, interviews are an interpretative practice in which what is said is inextricably tied to where it is said, how it is said and, importantly, to whom it is said (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004). The relationship between interviewer and interviewee, then, is fundamental in research interviews. But what happens when the relationship between interviewer and interviewee is not only that of researcher-informant but also involves other roles such as colleague and friend? In this article we will show how prior relationships are invoked and made relevant by both parties during educational research interviews and how these prior relationships therefore contribute to the ‘generation’ (Baker, 2004: 163) of interview data. K EYWORDS : acquaintance interview, frame and footing, interview talk, prior relationshi...