Pamela Cook shares a Rewind episode of Writes4Women featuring novelist Sarah Winman discussing her 2021 novel Still Life, alongside Winman’s background from acting to writing and her earlier books When God Was a Rabbit, A Year of Marvelous Ways, and Tin Man. 

Winman describes how she began writing through adult education classes, found an agent, and learned to trust creative instinct. She outlines Still Life as a four-decade story beginning with a 1944 meeting in Tuscany between art historian Evelyn Skinner and soldier/globe maker Ulysses Temper, later exploring postwar London, Florence, found family, art, beauty, class, love, and unity.

Inspiration came from learning about Florence’s 1966 flood and the “mud angels,” with Brexit influencing her “joy as resistance” tone. She details researching as needed, writing nonlinearly through many drafts, using ensemble viewpoints, and receiving crucial art guidance from Florentine art historian Stella Rudolph, and offers writing advice on finishing drafts, careful feedback, rereading great writers, and accepting doubt.

 

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Sarah Winman

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Pamela Cook

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This episode produced by  Pamela Cook for Writes4Women on unceded Dharawal country.

 

 

 

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