Ten Questions for Maaza Mengiste
“I didn’t always feel like writing but I still made myself sit down and do it. I practiced discipline and worked towards inspiration.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
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“I didn’t always feel like writing but I still made myself sit down and do it. I practiced discipline and worked towards inspiration.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
How do you handle research? How indebted do you feel to stick to the historical record? Two novelists discuss their experiences researching, imagining, and depicting earlier times.
A fiction writer’s habit of imagining the lives of people who live in her favorite houses leads to serious research for her novel.
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When writing historical fiction, the novelist must become an archaeologist—combining research and imagination to excavate relics of the past, confront ghosts, and make old stories new again.