The Ellis Bochner Award recognizes an outstanding published article or book chapter in Autoethnography and Personal Narrative Research. Nominations should be for works that advance, reflect, and/or expand perspectives on autoethnography and/or personal narrative in the spirit of Ellis and Bochner’s scholarship. Submitted works will be evaluated in terms of the following criteria: (1) originality; (2) creativity and quality of narration; (3) evocative writing; (4) engagement with human emotionality and subjectivity; and (5) significance of contribution to the field and/or to social justice. The award review committee welcomes publications that experiment with novel forms of expressing lived experience, including literary, performative, autobiographical, poetic, multi-voiced, dialogic, and co-constructed representations of lived experience.
Nominations for the 2026 award must be for works published in 2024-2025. Publication date is determined by the date on the FINAL published work.
Self-nominations are accepted for this award.
To nominate a work, submit a .pdf of the work using this form: https://forms.gle/hkhtMmYYHfDmJ62Z9
Past Award Winners
2025: Bryan McCann, Economies of Misery: Success and Surplus in the Research University
2024: Lore/tta LeMaster, “Suicidal“; and Jenna Hanchey, “Haunted Reflexivity.”
2023: Jay Baglia, “The Ontology of Oncology: Navigating Cyborgs and Assemblages Through Cancer Treatment”
2022: Julie-Ann Scott, “Disrupting Compulsory Performances: Snapshots and Stories of Masculinity, Disability, and Parenthood in Cultural Currents of Daily Life“
2021: Aisha Durham, “Wounded: Diagnosis (for a) Black Woman”
2020: Bryant Keith Alexander, Ayshia Elizabeth Stephenson-Celadilla, Katty Alhayek, Porntip Israsena Twishime, Timothy Sutton, Carmen Herna ́ndez Ojeda, and Claudio Moreira, “‘I’m Sorry My Hair is Blocking Your Smile’: A Performative Assemblage and Intercultural Dialogue on the Politics of Hair and Place”
2019: Aaron Dickinson Sachs, “Trying Tight or Splitting Up: An Adult’s Perspective of His Parents’ Same-sex Relationship Dissolution”
2018: Renata Ferdinand, “Remember Me: An Interlocking Narrative of Black Women’s Past and Present”
2017: Patrick Santoro, “Queerscape: Embodying Landscape and Rupture in Auto/ethnography”
2016: Nathan Hodges, “The American Dental Dream”
2015: Danielle Stern, “‘He Won’t Hurt Us Anymore’: A Feminist Performance of Healing for Children Who Witness Domestic Violence”
2014: Julie Novak, “Barren and Abandoned: Our Representations Left Unshared and Uncharted”
2013: Dustin Bradley Goltz, “Frustrating the ‘I’: Critical Dialogic Reflexivity with Personal Voice”
2012: Sophie Tamas, “Autoethnography, Ethics, and Making Your Baby Cry”
2011: Desireé D. Rowe, “‘I’ve Should’ve Done Target Practice’: Why Valerie Solana Missed”
2010: Larry Russell, “Learning to Walk”
2009: Nicole Defenbaugh, “‘Under Erasure’: The Absent Ill Body in Doctor Patient Dialogue”
2008: W. Benjamin Myers, “Straight and White: Talking with my Mouth Full”
2007: Christopher N Poulos, “The Ties that Bind Us, the Shadows that Separate Us: Life and Death, Shadow and (Dream)story”