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Shaping Real Lives into Narratives: Heather Clark on Truth and Fiction

How close can storytelling come to historical truth? Where do fact and imagination diverge? And what are the challenges faced by writers tasked with interweaving both? An interview and discussion with distinguished biographer, literary critic, and novelist Heather Clark.

In this interview and interactive discussion, which is conducted by UvA literature scholar Rudolph Glitz, acclaimed author and critic Heather Clark reflects on these and similar questions drawing on her experience writing Red Comet (2020), her Pulitzer-nominated biography of Sylvia Plath, and also her recent novel The Scrapbook (2025), which she based on a Word War II document found in her grandparents’ attic. Join us and listen to Heather exploring the challenges of shaping real lives into narratives, the responsibilities of the biographer, and the freedoms—and risks—of fiction.

Speakers

Heather Clark is a biographer, literary critic, and novelist. Her six books include Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the LA Times Book Prize for biography. Her most recent publication is her 2025 novel The Scrapbook, which tells the story of an intense first love haunted by history and family memory. Heather holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford, and was formerly Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield, UK.

Rudolph Glitz is Assistant Professor at the department of English Literature and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Apart from his various teaching and administrative duties, he works on the literary representation of generation conflicts and the life stages. He has published a monograph and various articles on Modernist family sagas, Shakespeare, computer game historiography, and poetry. Rudolph holds a master’s degree in European Literature from Cambridge and a doctorate in English from Oxford.