Proceedings of the March 2001 symposium of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History at Brigham Young University. This symposium was geared to a broad audience of scholars, family historians, and students interested in how one writes about a life and more specifically the life of a Latter-day Saint.These proceedings comprise a rich collection of papers that will be of interest to a diversity of readers—from veteran writers and scholars to those who are just beginning to write life stories.ContentsMeanings and Uses of Biography“The American Context of Mormon Biography: Some Preliminary Speculations” by Scott E. Casper“A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-First Century” by Richard Lyman BushmanSources and Strategies for Writing and Publsihing Lives“A Verified Life: What it Took to Resurrect Lewis Barney” by Ronald O. Barney“Giving Life to Lifeless Histories: Strategies and Sources for Reconstructing the Life of a Nineteenth-Century Latter-day Saint Ancestor” by Keith A. Erekson“Can I Be Objective?: Using Family Sources in Historical Writing” by Jessie L. Embry“Decoding a Daily Diary: The Expanding World of Diarist John Bushman and Clues to Community Life in Lehi in the 1870s” by Cherry B. Silver“Desktop Publishing: Simplifying Autobiographical and Biographical Publishing” by Leslie A. MarchantQuestions of Interpretation“‘Oh Say, What Is Truth’ in Mormon Life-Story Writing?” by Morris A. Thurston“Emmeline B. Wells: Sorting the Private and the Public” by Carol Cornwall Madsen“Drawing Lessons from a Life: William McLellin, 1831–1832” by Steven C. Harper“The Case of Virginia Sorensen: When Your Saint Is Also a Sinner” by Susan Elizabeth HoweReflections on Mormon Biography“Brushes with Mormon Biography” by Davis Bitton“Biography and Memory in Mormon Culture: Some Personal Reflections” by David J. Whittaker