RSVP:
510-204-9200 or info@ashbyvillage.org
When:
Friday, April 5th, 2024, 3:00 - 4:00 pm
Where: 1821 Catalina Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94707
Open to:
All
Writing the Historical Novel: Filling in the Gaps
History helps us organize the past, giving us the who, the what, the when and the where. But to discover what the past felt like, smelled like, and even tasted like, we must turn to fiction. Historical novelist Patricia Bracewell discusses the process by which she shapes historical facts into fiction, and explores the way she fills gaps in the historical record in order to tell a compelling story and shed light on the distant past.
Patricia Bracewell's historical novel, Shadow on the Crown, was published in 2013 in the U.S. and Britain, and has been translated into Italian, German, Portuguese and Russian. Its sequel, The Price of Blood, continues the gripping tale of the 11th century queen of England, Emma of Normandy, during a time when England was under near-constant siege by Viking armies. Her third novel, The Steel Beneath the Silk, continuing the story of the twice-crowned queen of England, was published in 2021. Patricia’s research has taken her to France, Denmark and Britain, including a summer course on Anglo-Saxon history at Downing College, Cambridge, as well as academic conferences on medieval studies in the U.S. and the U.K. Patricia has served as Writer-in-Residence at Gladstone’s Library in Wales, has been a panelist at Historical Novel Society conferences in the U.S. and Britain, and has spoken to numerous book groups and school groups about her novels and the history that infuses them. She is currently working on her fourth historical novel about Emma of Normandy.