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autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
"My research on tattoo meanings utilised autoethnographic accounts of practice to increase understanding of tattooing as practice & profession."
Patricia Leavy·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024Special Issues
··6 min readStory-worlds were magical—they transported me to different places where I’d meet new people, and learn about their lives in visceral ways.
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.
Autoethnographic Literary Nonfiction: I Just Want to Go Home – Moving, Loss and Unacknowledged Grief
"Moving away from a beloved home at a tender age was traumatizing, in part, because that home was the only place in which I felt safe."
In this new issue from The AutoEthnographer, we follow a ballerina through the desert, glimpse into the funeral industry, and process parental grief.
"Here is a humble attempt for the 2022 special issue that comes in simple words to show how climate change begins at home."
"In "Becoming Multilingual," part 2 of my column, "¡Aguacate! Bringing Up Bebe Bilingüe," I use autoethnography as a writing approach to capture and represent the personal experiences of myself, a qualitative researcher, who has become the researched."
I share real world examples of why I believe the trans community uses empathy as a powerful tool to combat transphobia and promote self-love.
Patricia Leavy·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024Special Issues
··30 min readIn Part One, I situated my work within the context of the work of writers. Now, I’m situating my work within the context of women writers.
In today's new podcast & video Marlen Harrison talks with current marketing interns about the role of culture in using Google Ads.
In this work, I unpack how realizing my queerness has influenced how I write my poetry.
I use poetry to describe living with ME/CFS, an illness that is chronic and invisible, thus bringing awareness to this little known diagnosis.
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
What is autoethnography? The AutoEthnographer's international team of editors offer definitions & suggested readings.
“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
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC POETRY
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
I write of parental grief & my mother's sweater as a comfort to me, exploring cultures of grief where pain meets love and love meets pain.
I wrote “The Crevasse: A Love Letter” to help me grapple with confusing changes to the terrain of my life.
MILK, ANTHOLOGIES, HORSES, & JOUISSANCE contained work as a meta-performance of the idea of texts passing through other texts.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC MULTIMEDIA
"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."
This piece explores the ways in which identity and esteem are interwoven into the topic of Black hair.
Shanita Mitchell and Marlen Harrison·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaMorePodcastsReflections on MethodVolume 3, Issue 2 (2023)
··18 min readToday we're talking with the award-winning author, researcher, and performer, Shanita Mitchell about performance and autoethnography.
These pieces explore through personal experience the cultural phenomena of migrant loss of identity and subordination, post colonialism, othering
When Whistles Melt into Beeps: Four Poems for AutoEthnographer Author’s Memo I approach poetry as a vessel to...
The Ultimate Wave: Prose Poetry of the Pandemic and Parents Author’s Memo “The Wave” examines the problem of...
Diane Riggins·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysAutoethnographic WritingReflections on MethodVolume 1, Issue 2 (2021)
··5 min read"My thesis began to unfold after doing some research on my final topic idea about Tolkien’s world, female characters, female gamers, and the stereotype that females are the love interests or damsels in distress. I chose autoethnography because it allowed me to add that personal angle to the paper because I am a female writer, reader, and gamer."
Patricia Leavy·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024MoreReflections on MethodSpecial Issues
··11 min readWriting fiction allows me to document reality and to reimagine it, just as we can always reimagine ourselves. And that is why we need stories.
Marlen Harrison·
All ContentAutoethnographic Art & MultimediaEducationFrom the EditorsMoreReflections on MethodVolume 2, Issue 1 (2022)
··5 min read"In this brief, animated autoethnography, I utilize the concept of a sociocultural third space to consider why evocative autoethnography can benefit from its own literary and arts journal."
Christine Sleeter·
All ContentAutoethnographic EssaysCelebrating Dr. Patricia Leavy's Social Fiction 2024MoreReflections on MethodSpecial Issues
··23 min readChristine Sleeter writes about Dr. Patricia Leavy's new genre, Sleeter's own books and her reflections on the social fiction series.
"This is my childhood memory of realizing the power of laughter when everything interior and exterior makes me scared."
However, this autoethnographic piece helped me recognize the importance of levity even when the intellectual content is heavy.
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.”
How do creatives find joy in artistic performance as a form of black feminist autoethnography? Podcast & video.
Editor Guillermo Gil's latest book review examines Chin who highlights her relationship to things, and/or her obsessing over wanting and buying things, and many more.
SPECIAL ISSUES
EDUCATION, INTERVIEWS, PODCASTS, & REVIEWS
REFLECTIONS ON METHOD


























































































































