10 Powerful Examples of Life Writing to Read in 2025

Want to learn how to make an impact by writing your life story? Read these ten recommended books for inspiration

Life-writing is simply writing about life, but it’s also far more than that. It’s about finding the meaning within true stories, so that readers feel connected to and even inspired by the person being written about.

Tom Bromley (@tom_bromley) is a published author, editor, writing tutor, and ghostwriter. He wrote We Could Have Been the Wombles among other novels, short stories, and memoirs, including prize-winning titles for public figures. Here, he recommends ten examples of life-writing to show you exactly how impactful this art form can be.

What is life-writing?

Life writing turns significant events in a person’s life into readable experiences. It encompasses any personal narrative from diary-keeping to published memoirs. Tom compares it to painting a portrait — you’re “trying to depict someone as they truly are”. The most important thing to capture is the experience of the events: the emotions, senses, and memories.

Autobiographical vs biographical writing

Autobiography is when someone writes their own story, usually in first person (with the pronoun “I”). Memoirs are also written like this, generally looking back over a period of your life in a reflective way.

Meanwhile, if the subject’s story is written by someone else, like a journalist or a ghostwriter, then it’s known as a biography (written in the third person: “he, she, they”).

Want to get inspired to tell your own personal story through life-writing? Here are ten books selected by Tom that capture different lives in very different ways.

1. The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn

The collapse of their business and a terminal diagnosis shatter the lives of Winn and her husband, Moth. Having nothing left, they make the huge decision to hike 630 miles along the south coast of England.

This autobiographical book has a poetic and lyrical style, while dealing with grief in many forms. Still, the story is hopeful and suggests the huge power that people have to face life’s difficulties—which struck a chord with many readers, as this book was a best-seller for eighty-five weeks in the UK!

2. H is for Hawk, by Helen MacDonald

This memoir won several literary awards for its depiction of how grief can lead to the strong desire to refresh and reconnect with life. After losing her father suddenly, experienced falconer MacDonald fixates on the idea of training one of the world’s deadliest hawks: the goshawk. Myth and history combine for a story of obsession and the will to survive.

3. Beautiful Country: A Memoir of an Undocumented Childhood, by Qian Julie Wang

A memoir can be a powerful tool for sharing stories that may once have gone unheard. In Beautiful Country, a family moves from China to America. Living an undocumented life in New York, young Wang teaches herself English and finds hope (and eventually visibility) despite the threat of deportation, racism, and poverty.

4. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama

Barack Obama first published his memoir in 1995, but it was republished in 2004 when he won the U.S. Democratic primary victory in Illinois. The second edition included a new preface and Obama’s DNC keynote speech, so the book developed with him as his political career grew—adding even more power to its narrative.

In the book, Obama shares his childhood in Honolulu and Chicago, leading up to his acceptance into Harvard Law School.

5. On Gallows Down: Place, Protest, and Belonging, by Nicola Chester

This book blends memoir with nature writing, to give the reader a sense that Chester is truly shaped by the landscape around her. From the birds overhead to the young badgers that forage through her garden at night, a new mother navigates life in the rural working class, moving towards her career of writing and protest.

6. The Snow Geese, by William Fiennes

This travel narrative shares the story of William Fiennes as he recovers from an illness, and is inspired to return to nature—by following snow geese from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada.

As well as exploring bird migration and beautiful landscapes, Fiennes also takes interest in his fellow passengers on buses, trains, and other transportation he takes. The book won several prizes including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.

7. Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, by Akala

This 2019 memoir and polemic analyzes British society across history and today. Akala, a rapper, journalist, and activist, recounts his early experiences growing up in Kentish Town, London. From realizing his mother is white to being stopped and searched by the police as a teen, Akala interweaves personal experience with a wider historical context of oppression based on race and class.

8. The Naked Civil Servant, by Quentin Crisp

Quentin Crisp was an English writer and queer icon who combined humor and often controversial commentary. The Naked Civil Servant began as a radio interview in 1964, which an editor at publisher Jonathan Cape heard and wanted Crisp to expand into a book.

A series of anecdotes from the first half of Crisp’s life, the book explores his flamboyant manner and work as a prostitute and nude model for art colleges.

9. Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, by Lea Ypi

Albania was difficult to live in when Lea Ypi grew up, but even harder to leave. Citizens couldn’t vote, speak, or worship freely under Stalinist policies. But then everything changed—in 1990 the statues fell and freedom was reinvented. But what does that really mean? How do people react when the world they know shatters, leaving unrest and upheaval alongside hope? Ypi uses her memoir to dissect what freedom means, and where its limits lie.

10. Maybe I Don’t Belong Here, by David Harewood

When David Harewood’s acting career was taking off, he suddenly experienced a psychotic breakdown and was forcibly hospitalized. Police officers restrained him, and he began a new, terrifying life in a locked ward. But what caused this break, and how did Harewood come back from it to continue his career?

Exploring the Black British experience of mental healthcare, Harewood also makes saddening discoveries about his family history, and the institutions that ought to protect vulnerable people.

Do you have a story to share? Explore more resources…

If you’re ready to start life-writing, check out Tom Bromley’s full course, Life Writing for Beginners. It covers drafting, researching, and editing, to turn a personal anecdote into a vivid, autobiographical short story. Find even more ideas below.

1. Learn what a ghostwriter does and about the ghostwriting process.

2. Create short fiction from personal experiences with this course by Shaun Levin.

3. Listen to our podcast episode on writing true stories that are stranger than fiction.