A retraction…In my post above I wrote: “I’m most puzzled (and yes, outraged) by the recent Joshua Ferris case. His critically acclaimed novel, Then We Came to the End, won the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award and then almost immediately it was taken away from him after it was revealed that the novel was based on fact.” I want everyone to know that this is NOT true: Joshua Ferris IS the winner of the 2008 PEN/Hemingway award. I had fallen for a spoof post on the Net. I’m relieved that the publishing world is not that crazy…and I regret having spread false information. I’m blushing! Oddly enough, my own falling for a fictional “factual” account relates directly to the discussion at hand.

I go to bed early, and so by 4:00 or 5:00, I’ve had enough sleep. I love getting up when the world is quiet. I’ll go to my office in the dark, make a mug of coffee, sit with my laptop. I’ll check my email, my on-line sites, and then get to work. It’s my favorite part of the day.

I’m most puzzled (and yes, outraged) by the recent Joshua Ferris case. His critically acclaimed novel, Then We Came to the End, won the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award and then almost immediately it was taken away from him after it was revealed that the novel was based on fact. Since when has it been a crime to create a novel from personal experience? And since when has memoir been held to documentary standards? Memoir is a story created from life, and a novel is often the same. I write historical fiction, and in delving into the research, I’ve come to see quite clearly that historians write fiction, as well. The line between fact and fiction is fuzzy, always, and I don’t understand this urge to nail it down. Facts can be misleading, and fiction can be revealing.

Great site! It makes sense to me that it would be women in American history. I suggest Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Oprah Winfrey. From reading through the posts, it looks like Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks are a shoo-in.