New Literacy Narratives is written for teachers, researchers, and students at all levels of experience. It begins with a review of theory and methods from new literacy studies, narrative analysis, oral history, and life course development. This opening discussion provides background and examples for designing participatory projects, conducting interviews, creating transcripts, and using reflective, narrative analysis as an interpretive tool.

The five literacy narratives at the book's centre are co-authored by undergraduate researchers, and they showcase the kind of findings participatory studies can produce. Each chapter illustrates a different approach to narrative analysis, and builds a theoretical story to interpret relationships between story structures and literate identities by: presenting a set of stories to focus the chapter; identifying story forms that affect relationships to literacy; and accounting for relationships among literate identities, cultural ecologies, and storytelling. The book's concluding section reviews findings from co-authors' literacy narratives, and suggests new directions for classroom learning and literacy research.