Meet Ella Yates, author of "Sincerely, Her: Analysis of Authorship and Genre in Women's Diaries"

Diaries and the Authors Who Write Them

Blog post by Ivana Gonzalez

Behind every woman’s diary is an author who writes not for an audience, but for herself. She writes her fears, her passions, and muses of everyday life. It’s where she keeps her most closely guarded secrets, and her entire life story, all within the bound pages of her secret book.

Scholars have questioned whether diaries are an actual genre of literature, arguing where the women who write these diaries could truly be considered authors. One scholar says yes.

_{Ella Yates, author of Sincerely, Her: Analysis of Authorship and Genre in Women’s Diaries}

Ella Yates graduated in 2025 from DePaul University in Chicago with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Writing and Rhetoric and a Minor in Creative Writing. She wrote her research paper, “Sincerely, Her: Analysis of Authorship and Genre in Women’s Diaries,” on why women’s diaries, and diaries in general, should be considered a type of literary genre. And by extension, the historical women who write these diaries should then also be considered authors, distinguishing them from other forms of authorship.

Her research was greatly inspired by her own personal experience in keeping a diary. Since she was young, Yates has kept a diary of her own, which she wrote in constantly: “I love getting to crawl into my bed and writing about my day.” These secret passages and notes were in contrast to her rhetoric classes at DePaul, where her professors taught her to write for an audience. That’s primarily what the writing and rhetoric classes focus on, writing for an audience. It was that conflict that greatly inspired the topic of this paper. That is, that diaries, which are not written for an audience, should still be considered its own genre of literature. This is also a big reason as to why many scholars don’t consider diaries as genuine literature.

Yates mentioned that another reason as to why scholars don’t consider diary writing to be a form of literature is due to the lack of publication. Many women who write diaries don’t send them off to a publishing company to get millions of copies printed out and sold across the globe: “A lot of times, people think of writing and authorship as ‘you are an author if someone else reads your work.’ That’s what’s circulated”But just because one doesn’t publish a manuscript, that doesn’t mean they didn’t write it. Even if it’s very old.

Yates pulled her research from many different timeframes of history, with her sources going as far back as the 19th century. Her paper focuses on three historical diaries, and one from modern day. The modern-day one happens to be her own.

There were still challenges that Yates faced along the way. In particular, she notes that she struggled with structuring her paper and getting all the pieces to fit together in a coherent manner. While she dealt with hardships in her research, Yates was able to pull through thanks to the help and support of the people around her. They often say it takes a village, and Yates certainly had a strong and supportive village around her, assisting her in bringing her paper to life.

In the end, Ella Yates wrote a very compelling paper on why diaries should be considered a valid genre of literature, and why the women who write these diaries are authors in their own right.

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Ivana Gonzalez is a student at California State University, San Bernardino, where she majors in English with a focus in the Literature track. She graduates in the Spring 2026 semester with a Bachelors in Arts, but her school days are not over. Ivana is aspiring to become a high school English teacher, ready to teach the next generation the importance of reading and analyzing literature, and what stories of the past can teach us about our future. And also because she just enjoys reading. While the path ahead seems uncertain, Ivana is ready to face the challenges that pop up as she completes her very own Hero's Journey. As a wise Hobbit once said, "Someone else always has to carry on the story." Ivana vows to change the world, one student at a time.