autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
Astonishing Truth: Abortion is Everyone’s Beeswax Author’s Memo Madison, Wisconsin is full...
I write out of the consciousness that I am both a product of the violence of war and a migratory being—not only in the strictest sense of physical displacement, but also in belonging.
You’re Still Here: Art and Grief in Autoethnographic Textiles Artist’s Memo You’re...
As I discuss my first queer event, a book discussion about a queer young adult book, Canto Contigo, I will explore my anxieties about my sexual identity, and the repercussions of this community warfare.
This article is a prequel to ongoing research into DIY Healing Within Ancestral Lands. A project born of growing up in a family system that was not kind, welcoming or loving.
This piece of original short fiction contains plot elements based on my recent adventures hiking remote trails in Ecuador and Colorado.
Written by a white, cisgender, male yoga practitioner and newly qualified teacher from a working-class, Northern English background, this account seeks to elucidate upon how the issues noted may manifest.
I wrote “The Crevasse: A Love Letter” to help me grapple with confusing changes to the terrain of my life.
Leavy’s Writing and Publishing Qualitative Research is a comprehensive guide that navigates the intricate landscape of qualitative research from the writing phase to publishing.
Coping with Pet Bereavement: My Forever Love for My Beautiful Cat 'Timi' is definitely not a farewell; it is only a love letter for my beloved cat who got lost on January 15, 2023, days after a magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit southern Türkiye. Like my country, I was also shaken deeply, and like the buildings, my heart almost collapsed.
From all there is something to be learned, as the river itself has been victimized, has not escaped its own environmental terrorism.
The poems in this collection are a reflection on my zero waste aspirations (and the values behind the movement at large).
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-11-234133.png)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-11-234133.png)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-11-234133.png)
SPECIAL ISSUE 2024: PATRICIA LEAVY & SOCIAL FICTION
An Invitation to Story: "Everything in my life has shown me that stories matter. Sharing stories matters. Through stories we generate connection, resonance, empathy, reflection, discovery, learning, change, resistance, visibility. Storytelling is at the heart of my work. It’s also at the heart of autoethnography. I hope when you read my books and the contributions in this special issue that you’re inspired to think about how you might tell the stories of your research and your life." Dr. Patricia Leavy
LATEST POSTS
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
“The AutoEthnographer is an award-winning, non-profit, open-access, peer-reviewed literary and arts magazine dedicated to presenting the creative side of autoethnography, a qualitative research method uniting ethnography and autobiography that utilizes lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena." ISSN: 2833-1400
What is autoethnography? The AutoEthnographer's international team of editors offer definitions & suggested readings.
Readers can ask questions about autoethnography or invite an editor to speak to their group or classroom.
MISSION
THE AUTOETHNOGRAPHER is a digital magazine dedicated to creating a public, open-source space for creatives to share their personal stories of cultural experience. We aim to support emerging authors and artists, to promote cultural diversity and appreciation, and to celebrate creative expression as a vehicle for shared understanding and positive change.
MISSION
THE AUTOETHNOGRAPHER is a digital magazine dedicated to creating a public, open-source space for creatives to share their personal stories of cultural experience. We aim to support emerging authors and artists, to promote cultural diversity and appreciation, and to celebrate creative expression as a vehicle for shared understanding and positive change.
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-11-234133.png)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-11-234133.png)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-11-234133.png)
SPECIAL ISSUE 2024: PATRICIA LEAVY & SOCIAL FICTION
An Invitation to Story: "Everything in my life has shown me that stories matter. Sharing stories matters. Through stories we generate connection, resonance, empathy, reflection, discovery, learning, change, resistance, visibility. Storytelling is at the heart of my work. It’s also at the heart of autoethnography. I hope when you read my books and the contributions in this special issue that you’re inspired to think about how you might tell the stories of your research and your life." Dr. Patricia Leavy
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LITERARY NONFICTION
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LITERARY FICTION
Visitation, an Autoethnodrama in One Act
In this autoethnographic play, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband.
Our future depends on readers like you.
$1 a month can help us reach our goals and continue to provide a platform for important voices and stories.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC POETRY
FEATURED POET: MILTON KARP
"My poems are not entirely mine. They belong to the people and events of my passage through life. For once the dam is breached its contents flow unabridged. - Milton Carp, poet at 91"
Writing fiction allows me to document reality and to reimagine it, just as we can always reimagine ourselves. And that is why we need stories.
Story-worlds were magical—they transported me to different places where I’d meet new people, and learn about their lives in visceral ways.
Gratitude is a recurring theme I hear from readers of Patricia Leavy’s social fiction. This is an essay about Patricia Leavy novels.
This is a humorous narrative nonfiction account of the strangest job I ever had working for a kooky fitness guru in Manhattan for six years.
In this essay, the current reality of queerness is juxtaposed against milestones in my own life as a queer man in America.
As I discuss my first queer event, a book discussion about a queer young adult book, Canto Contigo, I will explore my anxieties about my sexual identity, and the repercussions of this community warfare.
What happens when a witch is black? This piece is a salute to the transformational beauty of cosplay & all the laughter it inspires.
This is a love letter to my people, my family and a version of me trying to overcome the trauma of almost seeing their mother die.
However, this autoethnographic piece helped me recognize the importance of levity even when the intellectual content is heavy.
In this story I shifted my attention to the young woman –a nurse or a volunteer– who sat beside me and held my hand throughout abortion.
"My poems for this special issue seek to document a history of my choice, not just personally but humanly, to use autoethnography to weave through the personal and the political."
LEARN MORE “Bodily Autonomy: A Fetus for a Fetus” explores the cultural issues of what it means to...
Our future depends on readers like you.
$1 a month can help us reach our goals and continue to provide a platform for important voices and stories.
"I tend to take every loss of rainforest personally. My autoethnographic poetry 'The Threat' and 'John Doe' are reflective of this."
“We noticed signs of climate change and felt a sense of impending doom, even as we witnessed how human beings across the continent are trying to keep alive a sense of culture, art, and kindness.”
"I have continued to explore the usefulness of various poetic forms as a mechanism for providing access to suppressed internal voices."
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
However, this autoethnographic piece helped me recognize the importance of levity even when the intellectual content is heavy.
“A Quest for Social Justice: Notes on an Encounter” continues my accounting of having been falsely accused of sexual assault online.
Emerging Immigrant’s Accents is about how language impacts our self image as we come to understand ourselves and our cultural beings.
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/photo-of-laptop-glasses-and-earphones-by-Mauro-Segura.jpg)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/photo-of-laptop-glasses-and-earphones-by-Mauro-Segura.jpg)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/photo-of-laptop-glasses-and-earphones-by-Mauro-Segura.jpg)
HAVE YOU HEARD?
We're podcasting!
Listen to The AutoEthnographer in the car or on the go and enjoy discussions with artists, authors, performers, and researchers from around the world. In our 20-minute episodes we examine how autoethnography can be utilized in diverse contexts, from marketing and coaching to painting and songwriting.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC MULTIMEDIA
In The AutoEthnographer’s latest podcast, Marlen Harrison talks with Sandra Faulkner about collage and visual poetry.
"Dr. Nadine Khair discusses why autoethnography is essential to successful businesses in this latest podcast."
"Award-winning artist, Suzanne Hughes, talks about autoethnography and painting. Suzanne is responsible for the cover art for our special issue based on climate change."
"My oil on canvas series, "Journey of Self Love," depicts a variation of obstacles I've personally had to endure throughout my life as a woman."
This artwork is based on a startling and memorable encounter at the local vet while attempting to get Anaïs spayed.
"In retrospect, it was inevitable that birds and machines would converge in my work as a life-long exploration and expression of the relationship between nature and technology through the creation of avian cyborgs, the genesis of which can be traced back to my early drawings of robots and of the bygone birds of my childhood."
IAANI AWARD WINNER
“A Seat at the Table” is the autoethnographic manifestation of my vulnerability, anger, and anguish, of my black feminist grit."
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
"While living in Ecuador, I wrote “Home” which essentially is an homage to the “third-culture kid” phenomenon, when your parents are from another country than the one you grew up in."
Poet Anne McCrary Sullivan discusses her latest book Learning Calabar, Notes from a Poet’s Year in Nigeria with editor Michelle Reale.
The Ultimate Wave: Prose Poetry of the Pandemic and Parents Author’s Memo “The Wave” examines the problem of...
FEATURED POET: MILTON KARP
"My poems are not entirely mine. They belong to the people and events of my passage through life. For once the dam is breached its contents flow unabridged. - Milton Carp, poet at 91"
"It is my hope that these words will serve as the beginning of an ongoing dialogue about what it means to live autoethnography."
Laurel Richardson and U. Melissa Anyiwo writes the introduction to this special issue celebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy’s work.
"I had not been aware that this emotional research was also performing autoethnography, collecting memories from the field"
Get updates about The AutoEthnographer direct to your inbox!
Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
”As of January, 2022 The AutoEthnographer Literary & Arts Magazine is recognized by the United States Internal Revenue Service as a registered nonprofit organization with the mission of becoming a trusted, open-source platform to share and educate readers about evocative personal inquiry, to support emerging authors and artists, to promote cultural diversity and appreciation, and to celebrate creative expression as a vehicle for shared understanding.”
We invite you to participate in National Poetry month with us by reading and writing over at The AutoEthnographer's new Facebook group.
"It is in finding these solutions, the tape and the glue that holds us all together, that we find the beauty of who we are as people."
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ESSAYS
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/photo-of-laptop-glasses-and-earphones-by-Mauro-Segura.jpg)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/photo-of-laptop-glasses-and-earphones-by-Mauro-Segura.jpg)
![](https://theautoethnographer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/photo-of-laptop-glasses-and-earphones-by-Mauro-Segura.jpg)
HAVE YOU HEARD?
We're podcasting!
Listen to The AutoEthnographer in the car or on the go and enjoy discussions with artists, authors, performers, and researchers from around the world. In our 20-minute episodes we examine how autoethnography can be utilized in diverse contexts, from marketing and coaching to painting and songwriting.
REFLECTIONS ON METHOD
SPECIAL ISSUE 2024: PATRICIA LEAVY & SOCIAL FICTION
SPECIAL ISSUE 2023-24: QUEER
SPECIAL ISSUE 2023: LAUGHTER
SPECIAL ISSUE 2022-23: BODILY AUTONOMY
Visitation, an Autoethnodrama in One Act
In this autoethnographic play, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband.
SPECIAL ISSUE 2022: CLIMATE CHANGE