Deschutes Public Library

Writing about home, with Elizabeth Wetmore

eng

Writing about home

Online presentation by Deschutes Public Library on January 19, 2021

with Elizabeth Wetmore

DPL YouTube, January 2021

Elizabeth Wetmore, author of the New York Times bestselling debut novel Valentine, discusses the influence of place in her work. She reads a couple of short excerpts from her book and discusses the joys and hazards of setting her first novel in her Texas hometown. Then, to open a discussion about writing about home, Wetmore uses as a prompt an interview with Eudora Welty in the The Paris Review: When asked if place was a source of inspiration for her fiction, Welty replied, "Not only that, it's my source of knowledge. It tells me the important things. It steers me and keeps me going straight, because place is a definer and a confiner of what I'm doing. It helps me to identify, to recognize and explain.... It saves me."

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