autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
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My poem “Week After” explores my experience with assault, rape, and emotional abuse in a year and a half long relationship with an older man.
Confessions of an ESL Student explores the significant role that English study played in my development as a student and adult.
In the autoethnographic "Spinach Lasagna", the narrator joins a family of southern Italians and learns that grieving is cultural.
"This is my childhood memory of realizing the power of laughter when everything interior and exterior makes me scared."
"This is an autoethnographic narrative where I use my own marriage to tell a story about love, bodily autonomy, acceptance and illness."
"This is an autoetnography of a black fatherhood journey which encapsulates my hopes, my fears, my love of baby and mother, while trying my best to make sense of a Black fatherhood I wanted so very dearly."
I introduce artistic autoethnography and how the term a/r/tifact opens up the imagination to the possibilities of autoethnographic artmaking.
Just like Puerto Rican immigrants, animals might land in a complex political landscape where some might welcome them, but some might not.
In today's new podcast & video Marlen Harrison talks with current marketing interns about the role of culture in using Google Ads.
“Manslation” explores several episodes from the author’s childhood and early adulthood that show the development of his sexual literacy.
Ethology is a highly fictionalized ethnographic account of my travels around Tanzania, East Africa during my teens.
Sandra L. Faulkner·
All ContentAutoethnographic MultimediaAutoethnographic PoetryFrom the EditorsVolume 3, Issue 1 (2023)
··15 min read"Bringing up Baby” is a collection of collage and erasure poems that function as praise for and critique of (white) mothering.
LATEST POSTS
A new call for submissions that celebrate, problematize, challenge, or illuminate the many meanings of "queer."
autoethnographer: one who uses lived experience as evidence with which to explore cultural phenomena.
Our future depends on readers like you.
We believe that research over the last 4 decades has illustrated how autoethnography is a powerful tool for critical, cultural, personal, and professional reflection and expression; our publication illustrates how autoethnographic creative expression can educate, heal, inspire, illuminate, and challenge.
Just $1 can help us reach our goals and continue to provide an open-source platform for important voices and stories.
“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.

NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS
SPECIAL ISSUE 2023-24: QUEER
Rarely in the history of our English language has a word so quickly and so profoundly shifted in meanings and usage as the word queer has throughout the last century. As such, The AutoEthnographer is excited to announce a new call for submissions that celebrate, problematize, challenge, or illuminate the many meanings of “queer” whether referring to emotion, difference, critical theory, or sexuality.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LITERARY NONFICTION
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AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC LITERARY FICTION
Visitation, an Autoethnodrama in One Act
In this autoethnographic play, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband.
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$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"
SPECIAL ISSUE 2023: LAUGHTER
"Give Me a Strawberry Cockroach" is the first article in our 2023 special issue on laughter and tells a story of Japanese language learning and performance.
The AutoEthnographer is excited to announce its new Call for Submissions, 2023 Special Issue: “Laughter”
"This is my childhood memory of realizing the power of laughter when everything interior and exterior makes me scared."
"In this autoethnodrama, a woman terminates a pregnancy without telling her husband."
"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."
"Combining autoethnography and artwork, Supreme Justice aims to reveal the persistence of institutionalized oppression of women through history."
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.
"This autoethnographic poem is a question about the power of autoethnography in the face of the climate crisis. It is an expression of my dark fears, my depression that keeps me away from writing."
"Here is a humble attempt for the 2022 special issue that comes in simple words to show how climate change begins at home."
"Ongoing horrific events painstakingly filled my mind when I submerged into Dante’s Commedia Divina. Our tragedy with nature revealed itself to me in its deepest form."
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC WRITING
"The words we use and how we say them are much more than sounds, they tell a story that gives us away, revealing a history about and behind us, a place and a people that we have come from."
I. Hate. Black. History. Month. And I’m hopeful, that in time, you will come to hate it too!
”I still aim to engage in the process of life, commit to a meaningful purpose, and structure my life around an intrinsically satisfying activity. For me, I will continue writing as a way to make sense of what it means to be alive.”

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
"I had not been aware that this emotional research was also performing autoethnography, collecting memories from the field"
"I called out the demons one by one. I named them. I gave them precise blocking and ultimately, I controlled where they stood, breathed, and bourréed. I gave them an entrance, and a stage, and then I sent them away."
"The Pandemic Nature Project is a 35-minute short autoethnographic film that traces a series of personal experiences, emotional reactions, and critical responses to COVID across a series of short vignettes."
IAANI AWARD WINNER
“A Seat at the Table” is the autoethnographic manifestation of my vulnerability, anger, and anguish, of my black feminist grit."
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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.
“Woken Word” was born as my inner voice was awakening and the world, ironically was becoming “woke” while simultaneously retreating into isolation.
“My ability to be creatively vulnerable with my mental illness as well as the experiences which contributed to it will serve as a method of self-healing.”
"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."
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"
This video explores how editors have developed their approach to reviewing creative autoethnography and highlights strategies for contributors.
"Although I never planned it, I wrote a series of novels, Celestial Bodies, that have pierced my heart in a way nothing else ever has, changing me as a writer and as a person."
"Once I have the first line or two, the rest of the poem seems to flow rather easily. I write whatever comes to mind. Somewhat like a story rather than a poem. I then start to take out the excess words and phrases and pare it down to the essence of what I wish to say. Other times I do not change a word. The muses come and go on their own. I also believe poetry has chosen me."
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Sign up for our seasonal newsletter, only four times a year.
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
Publication Rights & Contract Information for The AutoEthnographer By submitting work to The AutoEthnographer, contributors affirm that they have read,...
"The AutoEthnographer is excited to announce the 2022 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative (ISAN), a fully online conference. The conference will occur via Zoom on January 2-5, 2022."
“The 2022 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative deadline for submissions and awards has been extended AUGUST 1, 2021.”
AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC ESSAYS
NEWS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS

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 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