LAUSR

The 11th International Autobiography Association Conference, held at the Universidade Federal de S~ao Jo~ao del Rey, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in July 2018, focused on the conference theme, “Secret Lives: Hiding, Revealing, Belonging.” For many IABA scholars, the conference itself was revelatory, revealing a wealth of life stories and life-narrative scholars in Brazil that they had not previously encountered because of their own lack of familiarity with the Portuguese language, the Latin American context, and other logistical issues. With more Brazilian scholars and students involved in the conference in 2018, the IABA community had a rich experience reflecting on the issues of who belongs where, whose lives are hidden, whose are revealed, and what our roles and reciprocal responsibilities are working in this field. As Alfred Hornung writes in his conference review, included in this forum section, “after these impressive days in S~ao Jo~ao del Rei, with instructive papers, cultural delights, and caring hosts, the IABA community can now look forward to ... a renovation of transnational and transcultural life writing scholarship across the American continent and the entire globe.” Within this conference location, one that Nancy Piedri noted provided spaces “that were particularly conducive not only to rich discussions, but also to the building of new collaborations and friendships” (see Piedri’s conference review, also included at the end of this forum), six international scholars came together for a forum on the theme of concealing and revealing in life writing. Their globally situated scholarship considered the terms concealing and revealing in multiple and enticing ways. Four of these presentations have been expanded and are now offered here as part of a conversation on the ways in which the acts of concealing and revealing function within life narratives to document, protect, remember, and visualize autobiographical traces of life. Our contributors take up these terms to trace the absent in such widely varying contexts as the documentation of undocumented youth life narratives, the oblique modes of life writing during the Arab Spring, the