Practices of Authorial Collaboration: The Collaborative Production of the Contemporary Military Memoir

Although usually marketed as single-authored, interviews with the authors of military memoirs indicated the significance of collaboration with others throughout their writing and publication process. This paper describes the nature of these collaborations. We go on to suggest that collaborative practices were not seen by the authors as diminishing to the centrality of the named author or the reliability of their narratives. That while the collaborative roles of editors, writing coaches, and agents were evident, professional (military) colleagues and friends, family members, and military institutions played a significant role in determining memoir structures, formats, styles, and contents. We also draw attention to the research interview as itself a time and space for the collaborative co-construction by researcher and author of conceptual understanding of the memoir. We argue that understanding these collaborative practices adds to, rather than detract from, our understanding and appreciation of this genre.