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Factual Fiction Versus Autobiography
January 24 @ 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Factual Fiction Versus Autobiography
The Korean Diaspora and Creative Writing’s Potential to Go Beyond Family Stories in The Evening Hero
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Undergraduate Creative Writing & Writer in Residence, Center for the Study of Ethnicity & Race (CSER), Columbia University
Moderated by Kim Brandt, Academic Director, MA in Regional Studies: East Asia (MARSEA); Research Scholar, Modern Japanese History, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Tuesday, January 24, 2022
4:00 – 5:30 PM ET
420 W 118th St
International Affairs Building 918
Co-sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
The alchemical magic of fiction means it can involve not just the stories of people, but places and history can be characters on their own. Fiction can tell us about lives people lived with the same truths as a history book, but a different approach.
Humans naturally want story, and also truth. It’s a time honored way to create characters and lives based on people we know. But what is it like to write backwards into things we don’t know, but wish we did? The author will speak about how her family stories—and also silences–of migration and war, her trip to North Korea, and other research informs the fictional world of The Evening Hero, a winner of a Columbia Humanities War & Peace Initiative Grant.