Biographical, poetic, and academic storytelling

Abstract

What makes a personal story worth remembering, worth telling, even worth bringing into a seminar room? Why should everyone collect and use their stories? And could these stories make academic life less boring—and more truthful to life?

In November 2025, Wolfram Aichinger offered two workshops on academic storytelling at the University of Tirana in Albania. On that occasion, he discussed some of the concerns of storytellers with Anxhela Lepuri. University teaching, he argues, cannot do without the great traditions of storytelling. But it should also draw on the small myths preserved in family picture books and on the tales told by taxi drivers on the road from Durrës to Tirana.