'As pilgrims we were captivated by the landscape as it changed around us, concerned with basic facts of where we would eat and sleep, and charged with the encounters and conversations that shaped each day. I had no desire for a fictional world.'
19-08-2021
Sarah LeFanu explores the question of what name(s) to use for biographical subjects, the ongoing danger ‘of not being quite critical enough’ when the subject starts to feel like a friend, and the persistent asymmetry of naming men by surname and women by first name.
Caroline Brothers investigates the issue of cultural appropriation in fiction, suggesting the right way for novelists to avoid crossing that line.
Sara Wheeler discusses the fine line between biography and fiction, and how to tackle the challenges of unreliable sources and research gaps when writing about real lives.
'I'm also very keen on reading work in translation, as the translator often has to work hard to render the writer's mother tongue into English, with creative results.'
Researching her latest novel, which is set in wartime London, Christina Koning found consolation in the knowledge that people in the past had survived against seemingly insuperable odds.
'Great writers... write how they want. If they want to tell without showing, they do. Read Henry James if you don't believe me. Or Flaubert.'
'Under contract to produce my second novel and with the clock loudly ticking, the strain of not being able to write was disastrously compounded by the strain of divorce.'
'I still employ that childhood sweet-shop approach of chancing upon an author I like then consuming all her, or his, books one after another until they are gone.'
'The precision of Wodehouse, the economy of Fitzgerald and the wild comic invention of Flann O'Brien; these then are the elements that inspire me.'
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