Patti Callahan: On Writing About Another Culture
New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan explains why her newest novel, Surviving Savannah, underwent several sensitivity reads and what her experience was like.
Author:
Patti Callahan is a
New York Times bestselling author and is the recipient of the Harper Lee Award for Alabama s Distinguished Writer of the Year.
Patti Callahan
In this post, Callahan explains why her newest novel,
Surviving Savannah, underwent several sensitivity reads, what her experience was like, and more!
Writers often look upon outlines with fear and trembling. But when properly understood and correctly used, the outline is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer s arsenal.
There are two stories, 180 years apart; two casts of characters.
In 2018, our first-person narrator, Everly Winthrop, of an old Savannah family, is a history professor at SCAD and a museum curator.
She had, just a year earlier, endured a horrific event. At a parade, a drunk driver ploughed into the crowd and killed Everly’s best friend, Mora.
It could just as well have been Everly who died. Why wasn’t it? Although the real guilty party was the drunk driver, Everly is sunk in grief and very pointed survivor guilt, which has isolated her, cut her off from family and friends, from joy, from life. Now in unproductive therapy, Everly is bitter.