Madison Smartt Bell Confirmed for 2009

We are very happy to announce that Madison Smartt Bell will be with us in January, for our twenty-seventh annual Seminar, Historical Fiction and The Search for Truth.

History, of course, is ever-unfurling. We're living it right now. Fiction offers a focusing lens whereby the sense of a distant historical epoch may be rendered more clear. One point of access into our theme is by paying attention to what's going on in the world, and considering the relevance of this or that soon-to-be-historical issue to the work of our assembled roster of historical fiction writers and historians. In regards to Madison Smartt Bell, the author of an acclaimed trilogy of novels which chart the Haitian revolution of 1791-1803, it is worthwhile to think of the recent and current travails of our neighbor, Haiti. A front-page piece in this Sunday's New York Times examines the current trend of nostalgia for the reign of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the notorious despot who, together with his father, François, terrorized the people of Haiti for more than 20 years. While Bell's focus has tended to land deeper in the Haitian past, an awareness of Haiti's twentieth century deepens the ultimate tragedy of the histories Bell has chosen to recreate. We'll be looking more into Bell's work here soon. In the meantime, the interview with him here gives some insight into his pursuit of Haitian history through the means of historical fiction.