Anna-Maria Kellen Lecture

The Art of Fiction

Award-winning writer Mona Simpson—author of Commitment, Anywhere But Here and My Hollywood—discusses the dramatic and sometimes tumultuous process of beginning a novel. Fresh off turning in her latest project, Help and Its Sequel, Simpson has arrived in Berlin with no fewer than three potential new novel ideas. One explores a biracial and cross-class relationship, another is a contemporary love story in which two middle-aged women contrive to write a romance novel to escape their jobs, and the third book is based on two historical women prominent in the life of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Simpson will talk about how a novelist selects from the many bits of inspiration that present themselves and how sometimes the material itself makes the decision, overriding the writer’s best intentions.