Finding the right words
;)
Short-story writer Steven Heighton, novelists Golda Fried and Anita Rau Badami and poet Susan Gillis discussed the role of research in the creative process as part of a professional development forum for creative writing students on March 17.
Photo by andrew dobrowolskyj
Several writers passed their wisdom on to fledgling scribes during the Creative Writing program’s professional development day on March 17.
Susan Gillis, Anita Rau Badami, Golda Fried and Steven Heighten spoke about how they integrate research into their work.
For her upcoming book, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, Anita Rau Badami had to search for details about the Air India bombing and the social and political climate in India in the mid-80s.
Even though the narrative is fictitious, “There are some facts you simply can’t fudge or fiddle with,” she said.
“I actually got into fiction writing and poetry because I hate research,” Heighton said.
But while trying to find inspiration for his own book set in the arctic, he stumbled across a book by a man who had once been stuck upon an ice floe with 18 other people.
“The main research became finding rifts and cracks in his narrative that I could wedge my own into.”
CBC Radio One recorded the session. It will be aired on its Saturday show, Cinq ŕ Six, in April.