EDWIDGE DANTICAT, interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson:

What is the role of autobiography in your work, or how do your own experiences fuel your creative life?

People always ask me about the characters in my books as if they're all living in my house. They'll ask how my daughter is, but they mean Sophie's daughter in Breath, Eyes, Memory. They even ask me about a character in a novel set in 1937 as though she were me. All writing has a certain level of autobiography, whether it's emotional or actual autobiography; we're always drawing a little bit on our own experiences, and I am no different. I don't write pure autobiography because I want the freedom to make things up. However I do feel like I need something actual, something real to keep me going, a feeling that there's something at stake. Often including actual events along with the fiction gives it a sense of reality. In The Dew Breaker, for example, there are actual people in there that others might recognize. For the characters to have actual people next to them lends a kind of reality and gives the fiction a parallel in real life, and that keeps me writing, gives me a sense that the characters and their troubles really matter.

DANTICAT, Edwidge. Novels: Breath, Eyes, Memory; The Farming of Bones; The Dew Breaker. Story collection: Krik? Krak! Travel: After the Dance. Memoir: Brother, I’m Dying. Two novels for young people.

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