Fictional life stories and biography

Wellington writer Philippa Werry reports from the Festival

I went along to this session keen to hear Kate Grenville, who changed my view of Australian history with her book The secret river, but Kim Scott and Selina Hastings turned out to be equally entertaining.

Paula Morris introduced the panel as three writers who all delve into the past and hook into the lives of real people, and the session focussed on how and why they do that.  Kate Grenville and Kim Scott both looked back on family history as an initial impetus. Kate now “blessed her mother” for telling her family stories of their convict ancestors enough times for them to sink in, despite her own “glazed indifference” as a child. The stories made her think there was “deeply unfinished business here”, although it wasn’t for many years that she realised what it was.  For Kim (author of That Deadman Dance), what he inherited was not so much stories as a sense of pride in Aboriginal identity, without the words available to articulate that pride – a challenge for any writer.

 

Also discussed were the relationship between biography and both fiction and non-fiction, the responsibility a writer has to real people when using their stories, how far “real” characters turn into “invented” characters, and how literary biographers will fare in an age of electronic communications. Selina pointed out that people tend to be more indiscreet in emails, but this is balanced out by the difficulty of sorting and cataloguing emails. Some universities are buying writers’ hard drives, but there is a huge amount of work involved in weeding out the spam from what is useful and valuable . The British Library has asked some well-known writers to print out and keep their emails, but this can easily lead to self censorship. “I love paper myself,” she said wistfully.

One of the delights of Writers and Readers Week lies in the scraps of unexpected information you pick up along the way, such as Selina Hastings’ stories of the 16 years she spent “dozing” on the staff of the DailyTelegraph (“one of the reasons Fleet Street collapsed”), how Somerset Maugham’s will barring access to his correspondence was rescinded and the reason Rosamond Lehmann chose her as a biographer – and possible regretted her choice, and Kim Scott’s insights into interactions between the Aboriginal Noongar people and early European explorers, and his evocative description of the south coast of Western Australia.

Beautifully turned phrases are another bonus. “Silences are a novelist’s best friend,” said Kate Grenville. And Kate again, talking about geography: “place holds stories and holds the truth below the level of analysis.”

I didn’t mean to buy anything but came away with a signed copy of Kate Grenville’s Searching for the secret river (the story behind the story). Couldn’t help it. Total fan.

Two of the writers appear again tomorrow: Kim Scott with Juan Gabriel Vasquez at 2pm, and Kate Grenville with Alan Hollinghurst at 5pm. 

Check out Philippa Werry's new blog.

Author photos below, top to bottom  - Kate Grenville, Selina Hastings and Kim Scott