Oxford Literary Festival - Science and Literature

There was so much on, and I had an opportunity to stay over for a day or two - so I did. I went to several very good talks. One - on the marriage of science and literature - could have been very good but somehow, it just missed the boat. There should have been a debate!

The event, held in one of the most beautiful rooms in the college, near the Hall and hung with wonderfully ancient glowering portraits, was billed as a look at how far one has to be a stickler for correctness when writing novels with an historic or scientific basis. I was fascinated. I remember only too well the dreadful and upsetting comments left on The New Scientist website when Tania Hershman's short story collection was featured, and how some readers seemed not to understand that fiction was mainly 'making things up'.

The speakers were novelists Ann Lingard (website HERE) and Rebecca Abrams (website HERE), both of whom had new novels to talk about. Ann's novel is contemporary, and has this wonderful title: The Embalmer's Book of Recipes.. You can find a link to it on her website. Rebecca's is called Touching Silence and is based on the physician who discovered the cause of puerperal fever. Ann Lingard was a co-founder or Sci-Talk, a forum encouraging the inclusion of scientists in fiction - one can meet scientists of all disciplines and find out exactly what they do.

The event. It was chaired by Dr Jim Bennett, Director of the Oxford Museum of the History of Science, who professed bemusement at the topic right at the start, and that was not very conducive to a rich debate. The first half hour of an hour long session was taken up with the writers introducing their novels at some length - specifically their research... rather like a book launch. They then gave readings.

There was some talk about their research in conversation with the chair, who continued to look rather bemused as to why he was there. When it got to 'ten minutes to go', and no one had addressed the topic as it was advertised in the programme, I asked the first question. Something like 'At what point does story and character take off from the weight of research? How much fact do you feel necessary to include, and more importantly, can historic or scientific 'fact' be blurred to serve the story?'

Both writers asserted that 'story was everything'. Science was there to 'serve the story'. But then Rebecca Abrams added that in her case, the facts were of vital importance as she was exploring a real man, real medical events which were of vital importance to the history of obstetrics. What fascinated her was the human side of the story. And Ann Lingard looked rather nervously at Dr bennett, and said that if one was incorporating modern science into fiction, one had to be absolutely faithful to the science, or one would be caught out. Older science, she thought, might be used more flexibly within fiction... but Rebecca Abrams disagreed.

In the event, the audience (small--twenty of us or so) had many questions. And the chair bundled them up into a single question at the end.

The man next to me turned to me - I'm writing a historic novel, he said. I am really disappointed. I know no more now than when I came in.

I do, I said. I understand that it is unacceptable in the scientific community for fiction to play with scientific fact. And I dare say it is the same for academic historians.

I bought Rebecca Adam's book. I have read one hundred or so pages. And it is so laden with research, that there is very little real 'character', as far as I can see. I am not 'swept away' by the story at all. Having said that, I am finding the scenario absolutely fascinating. The writing is good, if a little overdone for this reader. But I am also utterly at a loss to see why she decided to write this as a novel, as to me, it feels far closer to biography. Well researched, but top-heavy with real details and explanatory passages that take this reader totally out of any semblance of story.

And that sort of takes me back to exactly where I was before I attended the event. Historical fiction is not an historical treatise, is it? Or does the inclusion of science in historical fiction render the facts sacrosanct, immovable? Likewise, why bring scientists and fiction writers together unless there is an understanding that fiction is IMAGINATION married to fact?


.



W





http://www.scitalk.org.uk/

One World Launch

The beautiful quadrangle where the launch took place.

Ovo Adagha and moi

L to R: Dan Raymond-Barker of New Internationalist, Jude Dibia, moi, Constantinos Tzikas, Elaine Chiew, Chris Brazier of New Internationalist, Ovo Adagha.



This took place in the JCR at Christ Church College, and although it had some fairly heftly competition (there are four or five events on in the same time slots), we were informed that it was a sellout! All tickets sold out. The room was packed, and there was standing room only. It was lovely.

Ovo Adagha was introduced by our lovely chairperson, and he intoduced the anthology, talking about his vision and how it came about. How it started as a Third World collection of stories and how we all threw out that concept very fast.

Elaine read first, then Jude, then it was my turn. I read the opening of the story, asking the audience to suspend disbelief to aee/hear me as a six-year-old Inuit girl! There was discussion about the project, how it was conceived, how writers were chosen. How we organised it, worked together and so on.

There was much mention of Zoetrope. The online forum where the anthology was born and where it grew up.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie read, then Ovo. There was much signing, and natter, and all the anthologies brought to the event went. Fantastico. I also signed a few of my own collection - Blackwells Bookshop had really done well.

We were then treated to dinner by New Internationalist at a nearby superb Chinese restaurant, in the company of James, the Fund Director of Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The anthology is much in evidence in the Blackwells marquee bookshop in the meadows!! One pile on a stand, and another on the signed books table.

It is REAL!

Oxord Literary Festival

Off to Oxford to The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival
and the official UK launch of One World, the anthology of short stories published tomorrow by New Internationalist.
With not a little trepidation I will be joining our great leader, Nigerian journalist Ovo Adagha, literary megastar Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and fellow contributors Elaine Chiew and Jude Dibia on a panel at 6 pm. We will all be reading excerpts from our work, and talking about the anthology.


here they all are. You know what I look like.

Chairing the panel will be Dr Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Writing in English in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford, and Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. She is the Founding and General Series Editor of the Oxford Studies in Postcolonial Literatures, a series which offers accessible introductions to postcolonial writing.

From the Literary Festival Programme: New Internationalist has published a collection of twenty three short stories from fourteen countries, each of which speaks with the clarity and intensity of the human experience. The swift transition from story to story, from continent to continent, from child’s perspective to adult’s; together, these evoke the complex but balanced texture of the world we live in. The diversity of subject, style and perspective results in vivid and poignant stories that haunt the reader. The collection also reflects what can be done by writers thousands of miles apart in the borderless world of the internet, where many of them first met. Come and hear four of these writers discussing their stories and the anthology. The authors are donating their royalties to Médecins Sans Frontières.


I am also planning to hear Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at 2.pm, when she is being interviewed in celebration of her new short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, (Fourth Estate, 2 April).

This from the Literary Festival programme:
The twelve stories in this brilliant collection straddle the cultures of Nigeria and the West. Orange Prize winning author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie creates characters battling with the responsibilities of modern life, a world in which identity is too often compromised. The title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to re-examine them. Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's prodigious storytelling powers.


Click HERE for an interview with the author, some years back, by another of the One World team, Molara Wood.

A Poem from Leah

Sometimes, lovely things happen and make me think this writing life is a good place to be breathing.

Particularly lovely was this: being sent a poem in progress by a young Welsh writer called Leah Ebdon- she had been inspired to write by reading something on this blog. She caught the mood perfectly, and it was really lovely to feel that someone had ‘got under the skin’ of the emotional connections. Sometime or other I will write about it too, but can’t yet.

The original post is HERE. To do with finding a collection of stones and fossils when visiting my birth father’s study last year.

Leah Ebdon studies writing at Glamorgan University.and she blogs HERE
One of her poems was commended at The Welsh Poetry Competition last year. For details on this competition FOLLOW LINKS HERE

My Writing Shed

Lovely sunny day one day last week, and I opened up the writing shed. There were a lot of dead spiders and a book of poetry I had put down open, face-down last November.

I bought a pink desk, pink cushion, and very very sexy pink n black lounger for reading, to keep the men in my life out of MY shed. I don't think people believed me, so here they are. Minus spiders.

Getting madder by the minute...

Wonderful weekend, based at Albrighton Hall Hotel north of Shrewsbury, participating in a charity classic car rally. Whizzing about in a 1947 Allard, acting as navigator for my friend Sheila the intrepid driver.
Our 'very nice man' sorting out the throttle before starting the rally yesterday. It was sticking. Sheila had to pull it back up from the floor with her foot all the way to Shropshire from Sussex. Not to be reccommended, in a car that reckons it is racing car...
The Allard (her name is Eleanor, as she is an 'L' Type...) outside Stokesay Court, one of the stops.
Half of the lineup, in the meadow at Loton Park this morning, where we had coffee. We did the Loton Park Hill Climb afterwards.

.
The rally raised over £21K for breast cancer and prostate cancer research.

Western Morning News writes about Fish Story

I was interviewed by journalist Simon Parker about the Fish story, and the article appeared this week, in the Western Morning News. It is also ONLINE HERE with a photo of Levant tin mine, where the story is set.

I would encoursge anyone to visit this place for the atmosphere, the history. Among other things it makes one realise what we've lost by closing down our mines.