From reality television to celebrity gossip magazines, today's technologies have enabled a vast number of personal narratives that document our existence and that of others. Multiple academic disciplines now define the self as fluid and entirely changeable: little more than a performance that is chosen according to the situation. While news journalists still pursue the authentic narrative, advertising and politics might be accused of exploiting the narrative tendency, and across media the personal and public become increasingly merged. Real Lives, Celebrity Stories collects research from published and experienced professionals, practitioners and scholars who discuss narratives of real people across cultures and history and in multiple media. It uses narrative theory to interrogate the processes by which we create, promote and consume these stories of real people, and the ways in which we construct our own stories of self. By bringing together different disciplines it offers a theory of the production(s) of self in public spaces such as television, cinema, comics, fan cultures, music, news media, politics and cyberspace.

Introduction, Bronwen Thomas and Julia Round Stories We Live By 1. Storying Cyberspace: Narratives and Metaphors, Sue Thomas 2. Me and You and Everyone We Know: The Centrality of Character in Understanding Media Texts, Craig Batty Transforming The Ordinary/Everyday 3. The Good, the Bad and the Healthy: The Transforming Body and Narratives of Health and Beauty in Reality Tv, Peri Bradley 4. Competence in Your Own Enactment: Subjectivity and the Theorization of Participatory Art, Simon Grennan 5. The Transformations of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor: "Ordinary Life is Pretty Complex Stuff", Julia Round The Politics Of Representing Real People 6. Narratives of Trauma Re-Lived: The Ethnographer's Paradox and Other Tales, Marina Lambrou 7. Autobiography and Political Marketing: Narrative and the Obama Brand, Darren G. Lilleker 8. Merging Fact and Fiction: Cult Celebrity, Film Narrative and the Henry Lee Lucas Story, Shaun Kimber Celebrity Lives Reimagined 9. Fans Behaving Badly? Real Person Fic and the Blurring of the Boundaries between the Public and the Private, Bronwen Thomas 10. Remembering Frank Sinatra: Celebrity Studies Meets Memory Studies, Roberta Pearson Notes On Contributors Index