Writing Facts into Fiction

Grace Talusan, Lecturer in English

What ethical obligations does a fiction writer have to historical and factual accuracy? Are there different pressures on a novelist writing about a community that is not often centered? I will share from a novel-in-progress based on a real event that occurred in a Filipino immigrant community on Cape Cod in the 1980s.

Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction. She received fellowships from the NEA, the Fulbright, US Artists, and others, and teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University. Born in the Philippines and raised in New England, Talusan currently lives outside of Boston.

“What I Am Thinking About Now” or WITAN is an informal workshop series where scholars present recently published works/works in progress for early-stage feedback and development.