“Autoethnography Lets Us Explore What Other Methods Can’t”: An Interview With Dr. Tony Adams

I’ve never been dismissed or treated terribly because of my work, even though it much of it is explicitly queer and autoethnographic. At both institutions where I’ve worked, I’ve received the highest research awards. I also started an autoethnography certificate program at Bradley, which is available worldwide. People sometimes say, “He publishes so much,” but I also get comments like, “He’s not doing research.” To that, I say, “If it’s not research, don’t give me research awards.” Yet, they do.

At my previous institution, I co-taught a methods class with someone who always claimed that autoethnography isn’t research. I found that frustrating, but here at Bradley, I’m fortunate that the quantitative person in my department values qualitative work.

It’s heartwarming to see people from the hard sciences embrace this approach. Let’s talk about what brought you to autoethnography and how you developed as an autoethnographer. Can you take us through that journey?

Absolutely. My interest in autoethnography is rooted in moments that didn’t make sense at the time but later came together. During my undergraduate years, I was pursuing radio-television news and production. I hated reporting news, especially when we were assigned to cover mundane events like city planning meetings. However, one assignment that really shaped my perspective was when we were asked to interview a mother whose child had died in a car accident. I felt it was exploitative, and it made me hate the news industry. I decided not to pursue a career in news and went to grad school instead.

In grad school, I realized that research, especially qualitative research, can be similar to journalism in how we work with people. My early experiences informed how I wanted to engage with others in my work. I began asking questions about how we, as social researchers, can study important but difficult topics, such as child sex abuse or queerness in youth settings. These are often considered too taboo, but if we avoid them, we maintain ignorance about critical issues.

My training in journalism and research has made me think critically about how to include others in our projects, what we study, and how we study it. I see a lot of value in ethnography and how it can assist with autoethnography. Autoethnography isn’t a better or worse method; it’s different. It allows us to explore questions and experiences that other methods might not.

In my graduate program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I took my first formal autoethnography class with Ron Pelias, who comes from a theater and performance background. Later, I took another class with Carolyn Ellis, a sociologist, at the University of South Florida (USF). Carolyn brought in the social science perspective, while Ron emphasized the creative aspects. I also worked with Art Bochner, a former positivist social scientist turned narrative scholar, and Stacy Holman Jones, who has a performance and theater background. This diverse training, blending creative and social scientific approaches, was formative for me.

Did you choose USF because of Carolyn (Ellis) and Art (Bochner)?

I chose USF because it was known for being a friendly and supportive environment. I thrive when I feel cared for, and relationships matter a lot to me. I initially went there to work with Mark Newman, an ethnographer who valued personal experience. However, Mark left the university, and around the same time, one of my exes, Brett, died suddenly. His death, combined with Mark’s departure, shifted my focus toward work that felt personally significant. Art Bochner stepped in as my adviser, and his support allowed me to pursue work rooted in personal experiences, grief, and identity.

I often reflect on how the pieces came together. If Art hadn’t come to me and offered to direct my dissertation, I would have graduated, but I don’t know what kind of project I would have done. The support I received from him was crucial, and it was easy to be vulnerable working with Art and Carolyn because they gave me the confidence to be so.

How did you get into that vulnerable space, and how do you continue to live in it?

Vulnerability is something that comes naturally to me in my work, but it’s also deliberate. I feel that as a researcher, I can explain things because I’ve lived through them and offer lessons and insights to others about social life based on my experiences. When I do autoethnography, I don’t sit down with the intention of telling a story just for the sake of it. There’s always a larger purpose behind it.

For example, I was working on a book with Keith Berry and Cathy Gillotti, and I accidentally sent Cathy a personal diary file instead of the book file. She called Keith, worried about what I had shared. That incident reminded me that while vulnerability is important, it’s not a free-for-all. There are boundaries, and I won’t write about certain relatives because they follow my work and have commented on it. There are places I won’t go, and I’m okay with that.

However, being vulnerable does have its risks. I caution people to be careful, especially when writing about workplaces and colleagues. I’ve seen situations where vulnerability backfired on people who wrote about their work environments. It’s essential to be mindful of the consequences when sharing personal and sensitive information.

Vulnerability is complex, and I’ve seen a lot of bad outcomes from it. I’ve written letters of support for people who lost their jobs, and I know one tenured professor who was fired because of a comment he made about a colleague in a hallway. The colleague was upset that he wrote about it, and despite the letters of support, it didn’t make a difference. Vulnerability, especially when made public, can come back to haunt us. As Carolyn Ellis (2007) says, “We become the stories we tell” (p. 22). Once something is published, it’s out there permanently, and it can elicit strong reactions, even decades later. For example, Carolyn and Art still receive negative feedback for their work on a couple deciding to have an abortion, even though that work was published over 30 years ago.

However, there’s also a lot of beauty in vulnerability. For every person who might criticize or misunderstand your work, there’s someone who might say, “You saved my life.” That’s what makes it worth it. But it’s never about just telling a story for the sake of it. There must be a focused, deliberate reason behind it. What can we teach others? What lessons can we offer about social life that they might not otherwise learn? For instance, how do we study the moment someone receives a call about a loved one’s death, especially if it’s a suicide? We can’t recreate that in a research setting. That’s where the power of vulnerability comes in—it allows us to access and convey these intensely personal experiences.

I’ve been grappling with the concept of vulnerability, particularly as described by Brené Brown (2015). She says it’s not vulnerability if you’re oversharing with someone who hasn’t earned that trust. How does this apply to an author’s relationship with an audience that doesn’t know them?

That’s an important point. When I write autoethnography, I’m always aware that anything I publish can be read by anyone—my colleagues, my dean, my family, strangers. I must be comfortable with that, and it informs what I choose to write. The decision to publish is significant, and it’s something I don’t take lightly.

How do you navigate the ethical considerations around the privacy and respect of others in your stories?

This is a critical issue. For me, the line is clear: if I intentionally seek out others to include others in my work, if I pursue them for information, I need their permission. If I don’t seek out others for information, then I’m in a different space, making sense of my own experiences and impressions. I must be transparent with readers, saying, “This is my experience, my interpretation.”

For example, Regan Fox (2019) wrote an article about childhood sexual abuse where he admits his memories are fuzzy, like the static on an old TV screen. He’s honest about the limitations of his memory, which adds to his credibility. He doesn’t contact those who abused him for their perspective, which would introduce an entirely different set of ethical dilemmas. Instead, he stays within the boundaries of his own experience and is transparent about what he can and cannot remember.

In my own work, I’ve had similar challenges. In my book Narrating the Closet (Adams, 2016), I wrote about an incident where my father caught me watching something inappropriate on TV as a child, and he punished me severely. My mother read the book and was hurt, saying she would never have allowed my father to do that. While I believe her, my memory of the event remains, and I included her interpretation in the book alongside my own. This isn’t about determining what “really” happened but about presenting multiple perspectives. My mother wasn’t even directly implicated in the story, but her reaction was significant because it reflected a different memory and interpretation of the same event. I believe her when she says she wouldn’t have allowed it, but my memory doesn’t change just because she offered a different view.

Another example involved my aunt, who I called a “cousin” in the book to obscure her identity. However, when she read the book, she confronted my father, asking who this “cousin” was. I had to tell my dad that it was actually his sister; I merely masked her as a cousin. The fact that people can be implicated, even if not directly named, is something I always must consider. It’s a delicate balance between telling my story and respecting the privacy of others.

The other aspect of this is the boundary or threshold of others having a say over the stories we tell about our lives. That’s the tension: what gives others the right to tell us what stories we can tell and how we make sense of certain situations? Autoethnography often straddles the line between ethnography and autobiography, and I think it’s important to consider how people have tackled these ethical issues in memoir and autobiography, which have been around for centuries.

It’s not a new issue, for sure. Even thinking about books like Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (2020), the subject of the book would not be a reliable interpreter of the work.

Exactly. And that brings up interesting methodological challenges as well. For instance, I watched a show called Baby Reindeer (Gadd, 2024) recently, where the creator and actor grapples with the question, “Is this my story to tell?” The show raises important questions about the ethics of storytelling, especially when real people are implicated. In Baby Reindeer, the main character’s monologue toward the end discusses the tension between whose story it is to tell and what can be ethically shared. This is a compelling example of the ethical lines we navigate in autoethnography.

In many ways, Baby Reindeer is an autoethnographical text. It’s a powerful piece of work where the creator, who is also the actor and director, embodies his own experiences. This is what we do in autoethnography—examine culture through the lens of the self.

What are some of the most significant methodological challenges you’ve encountered in your autoethnography work?

The challenges depend on who’s asking. I’ve been doing autoethnography formally for over 20 years. Early on, in the 2000s, there was a lot of criticism that autoethnography was easy, biased, or narcissistic. I still throw the narcissism criticism back at autoethnographers who haven’t tapped into the “ethno” part of the work. But most of the people making those critiques had never actually done autoethnography themselves.

For instance, some colleagues would say, “I don’t believe in autoethnography,” and I would retort, “I don’t believe in surveys or interviews.” The point is, all methods have their limitations, but that doesn’t invalidate their value. Autoethnography isn’t easier or more biased than any other method; it just requires a different set of skills and sensitivities.

These days, those critiques are less common, especially with the work that’s being done in the field now, including issues like the one you’re working on. However, if you search “autoethnography” on X or Reddit, you’ll still find some of those critiques. Recently, there was an episode on X where a controversial paper titled “Masturbation as Method” was published in Qualitative Research. The paper explored the use of masturbation as a research method, specifically in the context of autoerotic ethnography. It involved an anime comic that featured young boys, which is illegal in many countries. The backlash was intense, and the paper was eventually retracted. The situation highlighted the importance of ethical scrutiny in autoethnography, especially when dealing with provocative or potentially harmful content.

At the Journal of Autoethnography, where I’m an editor, we won’t entertain manuscripts that bash autoethnography. We’re here to celebrate and support the method, not to undermine it. That said, we also take great care in the review process, especially with contentious topics. We’ve published pieces that might make some people uncomfortable, but we ensure they are rigorously reviewed and that we’re prepared to stand behind them.

I’m surprised those critiques are still out there, given how much the field has grown.

Yes, but they’ve become less frequent. I think part of it is that we’re in an echo chamber, but I’m okay with that because I’m surrounded by people who value the work and see its impact. I’ve seen firsthand how autoethnography can change people, both the authors and their readers. That’s why we do this work.

What innovative techniques or approaches have you found effective in autoethnographic storytelling and representation?

One of the fun things about autoethnography is the many ways people approach it. I identify as a somewhat conservative autoethnographer, at least from a methodological perspective. I work hard to translate common research practices into my autoethnographic work because I see myself as a social researcher. For instance, while it may not be explicit, I believe good autoethnography has research questions, even if they aren’t labeled as such. These questions often stem from a need to make sense of something in life—why am I feeling grief, confusion, or anger? Autoethnography is often about figuring out something that gives us pause. It’s the stuff we’re not cool with that drives us to ask questions and seek understanding.

People often ask why autoethnographies are so sad or difficult to read. It’s because they often stem from a place of struggle, where the author is trying to work through something that’s unresolved. You don’t typically write an autoethnography because you’re happy and content—you write because something is bothering you, and you need to figure it out.

I also love playing around with narrative voice. This ties back to the earlier discussion about vulnerability. For me, writing in first person feels natural, but when I tackle difficult or traumatic experiences, I often switch to second person. This creates a bit of distance, allowing me to write about these experiences while protecting myself somewhat. For example, Ragan Fox’s Touched (2026) is a book about his childhood sexual abuse. At times, he writes in third person voice because it can create a distance between the author and their painful memories.

Second and third person voices offer protection and can help portray vulnerability in a way that feels safer. They also allow flexibility in storytelling. For instance, in Narrating the Closet (Adams, 2016), I use second person extensively, especially in Chapter 3, which was the most difficult chapter for me to write. That chapter deals with moments where I had to be accountable for my actions and admit that I hurt people. Writing in second person allowed me to be present in the story while also engaging the reader in a more immersive way. In earlier chapters, like Chapter 2, I shifted from first to third person when recounting a particularly difficult time, using “Tony” and “Sarah” as stand-ins for myself and another person. The narrative shift allowed me to navigate the emotional complexity of the situation more effectively.

Can you explain a bit more about how second person works in this context?

Sure. In second person, you’re essentially narrating your story as if you’re speaking directly to the reader, using “you” instead of “I” or “they.” For example, you might write, “You wake up and realize your partner has left.” It puts the reader into the experience, but it also distances the author from the direct emotional intensity. In Narrating the Closet, Chapter 3 is written entirely in second person because it was the chapter where I felt most vulnerable. Writing in second person allowed me to explore those emotions while also inviting the reader to experience the discomfort alongside me.

Another technique I love is inspired by Susan Sontag’s (1964) Notes on Camp. Her note-based approach is methodologically brilliant. The idea is to write about an experience in a series of notes, capturing its essence through overlapping but distinct observations. Sandra Faulkner and I (Faulkner & Adams, 2021) used a similar approach in a piece on sexual harassment in academia, where we used second person voice to avoid ethical complications. The “you” allowed us to speak to shared experiences without directly identifying who was speaking, thus protecting our co-authors and the people we were writing about. The note-based structure can be incredibly powerful because it allows you to tackle a topic from multiple angles, creating a rich, multidimensional narrative that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

Carol Rambo and her co-authors (Rambo & Presson, 2025), also explored innovative narrative techniques. They introduced the concept of “Author X” in their work, where “X” could be a real or fictional author. This technique was used to deflect attention away from who was actually telling the story, especially in cases where sensitive or controversial content was being discussed. By using “X” and the second person voice, they created a layer of protection for the actual authors and subjects involved.

How do you approach fictionalizing details to protect people?

Fictionalizing can be an ethical and practical strategy in autoethnography. For example, in my book, I mentioned how I changed an aunt who wouldn’t allow me to visit her house into a cousin to protect her identity. This small change kept the family connection intact while masking her identity. The key is to figure out what details can be changed without altering the meaning too significantly.

There’s also a line you don’t want to cross—fabricating data is a clear ethical violation. If one wants to make up experiences, then they should at least inform the reader that the accounts are at least fictional. Granted, I could create a composite character based on multiple similar experiences with students who have come out to me over the years. That approach captures the essence of those encounters while protecting individual identities—and I should also tell the reader what I’m doing and why I’m doing what I’m doing.

I’ve thought about ways to deflect certain personal stories by connecting them to interviews I’ve conducted with others. This way, the story isn’t directly tied to me, but it still conveys the same insights. It’s a tricky balance because you want to protect yourself and others, but you also don’t want to cross into fabricating data.

Patricia Leavy (2016) has written extensively about the use of fiction in research, and her work offers great strategies for how to ethically fictionalize details while still staying true to the essence of the experiences you’re writing about. The goal is to protect the individuals involved without compromising the integrity of the story.

I was at a really interesting session on autoethnography where the writers felt that if someone is an abuser, they don’t have the right to be protected in the narrative. What are your thoughts on that?

That’s a valid perspective, especially when dealing with intense experiences like abuse. For example, we had an essay in the Journal of Autoethnography called “Highlighting the Numbers” (Anonymous, 2021), which dealt with a student stalking a faculty member. The author, a tenured professor, asked us to make her paper anonymous at the last minute because her stalker had resurfaced. We honored her request, changing her byline to “Anonymous Author, PhD.” Even though the piece won the journal’s Outstanding Article of the Year, we couldn’t celebrate her publicly due to the anonymity required for her safety.

This situation highlights the ethical complexities we face as editors and authors. We want to protect individuals, especially those who have been harmed or are at risk. We also must consider the ethical implications of telling these stories and how they might impact the people involved. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but it’s something we must navigate carefully.

That’s a powerful example of the ethical complexities involved.

Absolutely. It’s a reminder that we must be careful about how we write about others, especially in contexts where their identity or safety might be at risk. As an editor, I advise people to be very cautious when writing about their home institutions, colleagues, or students. It’s not that they shouldn’t do it, but they should be aware of the potential repercussions.

One of the ethical dilemmas I’ve encountered personally is when life events happen that are directly relevant to my research. For instance, while working on Narrating the Closet (Adams, 2016), a book about coming out, a student told me she was dying, and that no one would know about her long-term girlfriend because she was scared to disclose her sexuality and relationship. She prioritized death over disclosure. I included her story in the book, but I masked several details—changing her illness, location, and other identifying factors. Even then, I struggled with whether I should have included it at all. She has a copy of the book, but I don’t know if she read it or recognized herself, but it’s a decision I still grapple with.

Anne Lamott (1995), in her book Bird by Bird, offers a somewhat controversial piece of advice: if you’re worried about someone recognizing themselves in your work, give them an unflattering characteristic, like a small penis, so they won’t want to identify themselves publicly. While I understand the strategy, it feels judgmental, even bullyish, to me. I prefer to find more nuanced ways to fictionalize details that deflect attention while still respecting the truth of the story.

Are there any common pitfalls or mistakes you see in autoethnography that you think people should be aware of?

One common pitfall is not being careful enough about writing about where you work or the people you work with. It’s not a blanket “don’t do it,” but you need to be mindful of the consequences. For instance, if you decide to write about colleagues, students, or your institution, you must consider the potential fallout. Even if you believe you’ve anonymized the details sufficiently, people might still recognize themselves or others, and that can lead to professional and personal complications. I’ve seen situations where people have faced severe repercussions for writing about their work environments, even when they thought they were being discreet. This is particularly true in academic settings, where the community is often tight-knit, and information spreads quickly. So, while the narrative might be significant, the ethical responsibility to protect yourself and others must be a priority.

Another issue is when people fabricate details or data. There’s a fine line between protecting identities and crossing into unethical territory by making things up. It’s one thing to fictionalize small, non-essential details to protect someone’s identity, but it’s entirely different to invent data or events that never happened. Fabricating data undermines the integrity of the work and breaks the trust of the reader. Autoethnography relies on the truth of personal experience, so when you start fabricating, you compromise the value of the work itself. You need to maintain that balance between protecting your subjects and staying true to the events and experiences you’re recounting.

Finally, I think it’s important for autoethnographers to understand that writing is one thing, but publishing is another. Once your work is out there, anyone can read it, and you must be prepared for that. The moment you publish, your story is no longer just yours—it belongs to anyone who picks up the journal or book. This means that your colleagues, your dean, your family, and even strangers can access your work, and you must be comfortable with that. It’s a kind of exposure that you can’t take back, so it’s crucial to consider the implications before you hit “submit.”

Moreover, the way your work is received can vary depending on the context in which it’s published. For example, if you’re submitting to a traditional academic journal, you might have to play by certain rules, such as adhering to a conventional structure. That could mean following the standard introduction, literature review, methodology, findings, and conclusion format, even if it doesn’t fully align with your storytelling approach. However, that’s part of playing the academic game—understanding what’s required to get your work published in certain venues and how that might influence the way your work is presented.

I also encourage people to find their community, whether it’s through conferences, special issues, or journals that focus on autoethnography. For example, if you’re struggling to find a place to publish, use tools like Google Scholar to see where autoethnography is being published and by whom. There are now more than 140,000 sources on Google Scholar that mention autoethnography, so there’s no shortage of journals and outlets that are open to this type of work.

Additionally, one area that frustrates me is the misuse of analytic autoethnography. At the Journal of Autoethnography, we often receive manuscripts where the authors cite Leon Anderson (2006), who developed analytic autoethnography, but the manuscripts don’t actually resemble Anderson’s actual analytic autoethnographic work (e.g., Anderson, 2011, 2021). Anderson’s analytic autoethnographies are evocative and engaging, yet many manuscripts fail to capture that essence of analytic autoethnography; they try to use Anderson to justify traditional, boring work. So they cite Anderson, but their work doesn’t resemble his work, even though he coined the term. It’s as though people are using the term without fully understanding or embracing the approach. It’s a reminder to deeply engage with the methodology you’re using and ensure your work aligns with its principles and how it is practiced.

Another point that I find annoying is when people write about autoethnography without ever having done it themselves. There are several authors who write about autoethnography and who write about publishing autoethnography but who have never published actual autoethnographies themselves. This kind of secondhand authority can be misleading and often results in work that doesn’t truly represent what autoethnography is. It’s like trying to learn how to play the flute from someone who’s never touched the instrument—it doesn’t make sense. I always advise people to read actual autoethnographies, not just about autoethnography, to get a real sense of what the method involves and how it can be effectively applied.

You’ve given me a lot to think about. It’s clear that there’s a lot to consider, not just in writing but in navigating the academic landscape.

Absolutely. Navigating this landscape involves understanding both the creative and the structural aspects of your work. For example, when it comes to the traditional dissertation or manuscript format, one major challenge is incorporating thick description, which is a hallmark of good ethnography and autoethnography. The traditional format often relegates thick description to the findings section, which can make it difficult to fully explore the depth and richness of the experiences you’re discussing. If you’re working within that structure, you must be strategic about where and how you include these detailed descriptions to ensure they’re not lost in the process.

What about collaborative autoethnography? Do you think it’s more challenging to maintain the richness of the narrative in a collaborative format?

Collaborative autoethnography can be tricky, especially in journal articles. The more people you have collaborating, the thinner the thick description tends to get, particularly in a journal article, not in a book. For instance, at the Journal of Autoethnography, we might receive an eight-person collaborative autoethnography that’s 25 pages long, and each person only gets a paragraph in the findings section to talk about their experience. That’s not enough space to capture the richness of each collaborator’s experiences. It’s hard to maintain the depth of description when you’re working with multiple contributors, especially within the constraints of a journal article.

The ones that work well are those that are very focused. It’s a matter of zooming in on something really small and letting each contributor fully explore that specific aspect. But if you’re doing a collaborative autoethnography with three other people on, say, not getting into a Ph.D. program, that description is going to get really thin. It’s just the nature of the format. In a book, you have more space to delve into each person’s experience, but in a journal article, it’s much more challenging.

So, my advice is to be mindful of the format you’re using and the implications it has for your storytelling. Whether you’re working in a traditional format or pushing the boundaries of the genre, the key is to remain focused on the core elements of good autoethnography: thick description, compelling narrative, and ethical responsibility.

I come to autoethnography through ethnography and through life writing—autobiography and memoir. Both of those approaches, well, and the “graphic” is front and center with autobiography and ethnography. Good ethnographies are compelling reads; good life writing should be compelling reads. Ethnography and autoethnography are among the few methods that have “graphy” as a core component, and that matters. We don’t talk about “interview graphy,” “phenomenology graphy,” or “survey graphy,” but the “graphy” in ethnography and autoethnography matters. It’s about storytelling—ethnographies tend to be compelling reads, and life writing tends to be compelling reads. Autoethnography had better be a compelling read; it needs to be a good story.

In my world, good stories are essential. I’m going to take lessons on storytelling from people outside of academia, like Pixar or those working in fiction. How do they tell stories? For instance, I watched Deadpool (Miller, 2016) recently. Deadpool doesn’t follow the traditional academic format—there’s no introduction, literature review, methods, findings, discussion, and conclusion. That’s not how good stories work, and we shouldn’t expect them to. I’m also going to bring in the social justice aspect of autoethnography. I see autoethnography as a method that facilitates social justice. I want readers to be engaged, and one way they engage is through storytelling. We are storytelling creatures—Homer, Aesop, these ancient storytellers knew this. We live in stories. If we want our stories to do something, to create change, we have to make them accessible.

One of my favorite books is On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Vuong, 2019). It’s autofiction, and it’s absolutely stunning. The opening chapter is the author’s letter to his Vietnamese mother who could never read it because she doesn’t know how to read English. She has since passed away, so she really can’t read his work now. The film company A24 is working on a film version of it. That’s a kind of autoethnography—it’s making something so accessible that it reaches people beyond the traditional academic audience. Now, I sense many of us don’t expect to get a movie deal out of our autoethnographies, but accessibility is key. Our academic structures often don’t allow for this because of their rigid, social scientific, cookie-cutter formats. That’s not how good stories are told.

However, I’ll say this: when I wrote my dissertation (Adams, 2008), Art Bochner required me to write it in that traditional format because he wanted me to be trained in it, so I know how to do it. I’m not bashing the format because there’s something inherently wrong with it, but if you’re understanding autoethnography through that format, be careful. That’s an automatic red flag—it’s your first strike against you if you’re using that format. That’s not to say it can’t be good; there are good autoethnographies that follow it, but you’ve got to work really hard to tell a good story within that structure. In the academic world, I understand that even autoethnographies formatted in that way are doing social justice work within the context of the academy. But if you expect to get a movie deal out of it, I doubt that would happen.

It sounds like you’re really passionate about this. Are there any examples of autoethnographies that use more traditional social science formats that you think are still effective?

Yes, there are a few. Amir Marvasti’s (2005) Being Middle Eastern American is a great example. It follows a very traditional structure, but it’s also a very engaging piece of work. Another one that comes to mind is an article by Dawn Zibricky (2014) about motherhood and raising a child with autism. It’s very traditionally structured, but it’s really well done. These examples show that it is possible to work within the traditional format and still create a compelling, evocative piece of autoethnography. But you’ve got to be really skilled to pull it off.

I see. And I was also thinking about how the limitations of journals—like the word count—can impact the richness of qualitative work. Most journals have space constraints, so it’s hard to publish the full richness of qualitative work in a 5,000-word paper.

Exactly. That’s another challenge. Good ethnographies are known for their thick description, but when you’re limited to a 5,000-word journal article, it’s hard to include all that richness. The findings section in particular gets squeezed, and you lose a lot of the depth that makes qualitative research so valuable.

You’ve mentioned Google Scholar as a tool for tracking the growth of autoethnography. Can you talk more about that?

I love throwing in a Google Scholar timestamp in some of my work just to track how many hits “autoethnography” gets. When we first launched the Journal of Autoethnography in 2020, there were about 15,000 references to autoethnography on Google Scholar. Now, there are over 140,000. This growth is significant. It shows that autoethnography is gaining traction and becoming more recognized as a legitimate method in academic research. When folks ask where to publish, I say, “Go to Google Scholar. See where people are publishing, see what they’re doing.” There are so many journals doing this work, so find your people.

You’ve talked about a lot of advice for scholars publishing work. Can you speak to overcoming potential biases or misunderstandings in publishing?

Overcoming biases and misunderstandings often comes down to knowing where you want to publish and playing the game. You must do your research to see what journals are doing, what formats they use, and how much they allow you to push boundaries. If a journal consistently publishes articles in a traditional format, you’ll likely need to structure your work that way if you want to get published there.

I also think it’s important to seek feedback from others—ask colleagues or mentors where they think your work might fit. If you’re targeting a specific journal, look at the autoethnographies they’ve published before. How are those structured? What kinds of stories are they telling? This research can help you tailor your submission to better align with the journal’s expectations.

Another point I want to emphasize is the importance of building infrastructure. Even if your autoethnography follows a traditional format, it’s still contributing to the field. It’s about making the work accessible and legitimate within the context of the discipline. Every piece of autoethnography that gets published helps to build the infrastructure for future scholars to do this kind of work.

At the Journal of Autoethnography, we get a lot of submissions, and we must do a lot of desk rejections because we’re overwhelmed with submissions. But when we do desk rejections, we try to be constructive and suggest other places where the work might fit. We want to help build that infrastructure by guiding authors to the right outlets for their work.

So, my advice is to think strategically about where you want to publish, understand the formats those journals use, and get feedback from others. And remember, even if your work follows a more traditional format, it’s still valuable if it’s done well.

That’s great advice. It’s clear that there’s a lot to consider, not just in writing but in navigating the academic landscape.

Absolutely. Navigating this landscape involves understanding both the creative and structural aspects of your work. My advice is to be mindful of the format you’re using and the implications it has for your storytelling. Whether you’re working in a traditional format or pushing the boundaries of the genre, the key is to remain focused on the core elements of good autoethnography: thick description, compelling narrative, and ethical responsibility.