The line between memoir and autobiography is a fuzzy one, especially in this modern literary era where writers are constantly blurring the boundaries between genres to create a new, exciting one. Like an autobiography, a memoir is a narrative that reveals experiences within the author's lifetime.But there's a key difference that publishers use to define each—the timeline covered in the writing. An autobiography focuses on the chronology of the writer's entire life while a memoir covers one specific aspect of the writer's life.