In 1999, Zhao Baisheng created the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) at the First International Auto/Biography Conference in Peking University, attended by delegates from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America. Its aims are to broaden the world vision of auto/biographers, scholars and readers, to deepen the cross-cultural understanding of self, identity and experience, and to carry on global dialogues on life writing. An organizing committee was formed in Beijing. After the conference, Craig Howes, director of the Center for Biographical Research, set up a list-serve for IABA at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Susanna Egan, Gabriele Helms and Shirley Neuman organized the second IABA conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in July 2000. At the conference, Richard S. Freadman, director of Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography of La Trobe University, offered to host the third IABA conference in Melbourne in 2002.

In 2004, David Parker, Chair of the English Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, held the fourth IABA conference in Hong Kong. Alfred Hornung organized the fifth IABA conference at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany in July, 2006. Craig Howes will organize the sixth IABA conference at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa in June, 2008.