Karen Cushman
South Mission Beach seemed a peaceful and comforting sort of place, so its juxtaposition with the coming war was intriguing.
South Mission Beach seemed a peaceful and comforting sort of place, so its juxtaposition with the coming war was intriguing.
I spent a lot of time in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and in Russia, meeting with people and learning about what they had been through.
In my most recent book Flooded, Requiem for Johnstown, the industrial town of Johnstown PA sets the entire story in motion. If there had been no Johnstown PA in 1889, there would have been no story.
The truth is, I’m not particularly good at inventing places. But I love to fill real places with people that come out of my own imaginings.
I read detailed accounts of prison life, interviewed people who worked in prison systems, watched documentaries and fictional films, visited a prison …
The setting grew out of an event that captured my imagination, which was my great-grandmother homesteading by herself in eastern Montana shortly before WWI.
Because the first nugget of Peter Lee’s Notes from the Field was based on a real road trip that my family had done, the setting (starting in Vancouver and then traveling to Drumheller, Alberta) and the plot are tightly woven together.
In so many ways, the setting in Long Walk is the story. As a young boy, Salva had to escape from a war and walk for months through hostile lands to reach safety.
In so many ways, the setting in Long Walk is the story. As a young boy, Salva had to escape from a war and walk for months through hostile lands to reach safety.
When I decide to write a story, the characters probably emerge first, then the location in which the characters reside, then the story, which is, of course, influenced by a strong sense of place.