Fiction, Memoir, Social Issues, Writers on Writing

SEP 17: Ellen Keith’s The Dutch Wife & Sara Smarsh’s Heartland

Award-winning writer Ellen Keith joins us today to discuss how she found the inspiration for a great historical fiction novel in one of the worst moments of humanity’s history.  In The Dutch Wife, she chronicles a little known piece of World War II history, exposing the concentration camp brothels.

Ellen’s work has appeared in publications such as The New Quarterly and The Globe and Mail, and she has received the Anton Fiction Prize and the James Patrick Folinsbee Memorial Scholarship in Creative Writing.

Born a fifth-generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the daughter of generations of teen moms on her maternal side, Sara Smarsh was raised in a family of laborers trapped in a cycle of poverty.  In Heartland, she takes an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the perils of having less in a country known for its excess.

Sara has covered socioeconomic class, political, and public policy for numerous publications including Harpers.org, The Guardian, and NewYorker.com. She’s a recent Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard and former professor of nonfiction writing.

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