F236. Write What You Want to Know: Fiction Writers on Research
Friday, March 9, 2018
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm
Whether your project is inspired by the real world or an imagined one, research can play an essential role in writing fiction. How do we use facts without allowing them to derail our narratives? How do we take advantage of resources outside of our comfort zones? From conducting academic research to personal interviews, mining family histories to the depths of the Internet, five writers discuss tactics for exploring the interplay between research and imagination.
Participants
Moderator:
Walter B. Thompson
Lucy Tan is the author of the novel What We Were Promised. She is a Kundiman fellow, a UW-Madison MFA graduate, and winner of the 2015 Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest.
Joseph Cassara is the author of the novel The House of Impossible Beauties. He holds degrees from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was a 2016–2017 writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
Judith Claire Mitchel is the author of the novels The Last Day of the War and A Reunion of Ghosts. She is the Dorothy Draheim Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she directs the creative writing program and teaches undergraduate and graduate fiction workshops.
Lillian Li
