Once a fringe literary term, autofiction has entered the mainstream. Readers now find the word tossed around in book reviews, on podcasts, and across social media, often with a tinge of mystery or confusion. Is it memoir? Is it fiction? Is it a form of confession, performance, therapy, or critique? The answer is: yes — and no. Autofiction thrives in the gray areas. And that’s exactly why so many writers are embracing it.
Autofiction is a literary genre that blends elements of autobiography and fiction. The protagonist often shares the author’s name, biography, or key life events, but the narrative is not constrained by factual accuracy. Instead, autofiction invites invention, ambiguity, and narrative experimentation.
The term was first coined by French writer Serge Doubrovsky in 1977 to describe his novel Fils (translated: Son). He wrote:
“Fiction, of events and facts strictly real... if you wish, autofiction.”
From the start, autofiction positioned itself as both truthful and imaginative — an unstable hybrid that questions the very nature of truth, identity, and authorship.
Memoir typically adheres to the known facts of a writer’s life. The contract with the reader is clear: what you're reading actually happened. In contrast, autofiction deliberately blurs the line. The reader is never quite sure what is real and what is invented — and that tension becomes part of the experience.
Where memoir says: "This is me," autofiction asks: "What if this is me, but altered? What do I reveal when I don’t have to be exact?"
Though the term is relatively modern, writers have long experimented with blending fact and fiction. Rousseau’s Confessions, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and even Virginia Woolf’s Orlando play with autobiography and invention. In the 20th century, authors like Marguerite Duras and Roland Barthes further pushed the boundaries of personal narrative.
In recent decades, autofiction has flourished — especially in reaction to the performative nature of social media and the pressures of identity politics. Readers are hungry for something raw and reflective, but not necessarily bound to facts. Writers have responded by crafting selves that are versions of the truth — emotionally authentic, if not always documentary accurate.
Here are some of the most influential and widely read writers working in autofiction today:
There are cultural, psychological, and literary reasons why autofiction has exploded in the past two decades:
Critics sometimes dismiss autofiction as narcissistic or plotless. But done well, it is a highly conscious literary mode. Writers use it to explore how narrative works, how language constructs identity, and how writing reshapes memory.
In 10:04, Ben Lerner writes:
"I’m trying to write about how we experience time — and the uncanny way we live inside and outside our lives simultaneously."
That tension — between presence and absence, confession and performance — is what gives autofiction its strange, urgent power.
Autofiction isn’t about having the last word on the self. It’s about lingering in the questions: Who am I? What part of this is true? What happens when I turn life into language?
As Annie Ernaux puts it: "I shall never know if I have written the truth, the truth about myself or the truth about the world." And that uncertainty — painful, liberating, and profoundly human — is what autofiction makes visible.