Kamila Shamsie: writing the unfamiliar
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An RSL/Booker Prize Foundation Masterclass with Kamila Shamsie on writing the unfamiliar.
Top Tips
- Writing has to be about discovery – don’t limit your ideas of what you’re allowed to discover.
- Keep in mind what Colum McCann once said – rather than writing what you know, write towards what you want to know.
- Never underestimate what can be achieved by the combination of research and imagination
- There is no such thing as a singular experience of a place, a time, an event, a gender. Think about how your characters live through what is happening to them rather than attempting to write the definitive account of any experience.
Reading list
- The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
- The Hired Man – Aminatta Forna
- Ice Road – Gillian Slovo
- The Wasted Vigil – Nadeem Aslam
- In the Orchard, the Swallows – Peter Hobbs
Recorded on: April 11, 2015
Recorded at: Somerset House
Sponsored by: Booker Prize Foundation
