Although she ghostwrote an autobiography of S. S. McClure early in her career, Willa Cather sublimated her own biographical impulse into her works of fiction. By applying Susan Stanford Friedman's paradigm for female self-writing to Cather's life and works, we can help explain contradictions and ironies in Cather's biographical/autobiographical stance and illuminate, as well, readings of the most biographical of Cather's novels.