Suspend Your Disbelief

Posts Tagged ‘research and history’

Shop Talk |

The "Wolf Hall Effect"

by Celeste Ng

With the 2010 Man Booker Prize announcement just over a week away, let’s take a quick look back. The Booker is one of world’s top literary prizes, and Booker prize winners are regarded as highly influential books. So what effect did last year’s winner, Hilary Mantel’s wildly popular Wolf Hall, have? First, the personal effect on the author herself: in The Economist’s Intelligent Life, Mantel describes her experience winning the Man Booker Prize. Some nine months on, I can report that the Man Booker has done me nothing but good. Because I am in the middle of a project—my next […]


Interviews |

Consumed by the Country: An Interview with Tatjana Soli

by Tyler McMahon

Tatjana Soli’s debut novel, The Lotus Eaters, takes place during the Vietnam War and focuses on a female combat photographer. Tyler McMahon talks with the author about how we choose our subject matter, the challenges of writing about well-documented history, the role research plays in her process, and why novels matter in an era increasingly dominated by nonfiction.


Interviews |

The Shape of Disaster: An Interview with Margaret Lazarus Dean

Margaret Lazarus Dean’s The Time It Takes to Fall takes place in the early 80’s in Cape Canaveral, a space town, during a time when NASA and shuttle launches were still a part of the American story of success. Jennifer Metsker talks with the author about how the Challenger disaster affected us, the unique ways fiction captures the felt world, writing from the point of view of a child, and why we should allow our characters to misbehave.




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