BioFictions—Turning “Real” People into Fictional Characters

THIS EVENT IS FILLED. Novelists often go to great lengths in researching past lives only to turn their findings into fiction.  In a discussion moderated by Megan Marshall, novelists Geraldine Brooks, Matthew Pearl, and Alice Hoffman, will talk about the process, where they draw the line between fact and fiction, and what inspires them to make fiction out of history. Geraldine Brooks is the author of five novels, including the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner, March. Her 2015 novel, The Secret Chord, reimagines the life of King David in Second Iron Age Israel. Matthew Pearl’s five novels include The Dante Club (set in 19^th-century Cambridge among the Fireside Poets), The Last Dickens, The Poe Shadow, and most recently, The Last Bookaneer, featuring Robert Louis Stevenson.  Alice Hoffman, the author of over two dozen books, often uses history in her fiction; The Marriage of Opposites, her latest novel, is based on the life of Camille Pissarro’s mother in a community of Jews living in exile on St. Thomas.

New England Biography Seminar series information