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Conference Schedule 2019

Conference Schedule 2019

Friday, February 22, 2019, 4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.

Fact into Fiction with Tara Ison

Date(s): Friday, February 22, 2019, 4:15 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Location: Thoren, University Club (view map)
Type(s): Presentation
Genre and Form(s): Fiction, Mixed Genre, Research
Tags: n/a

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About the Session

This session will examine how seemingly dry facts and figures can be transformed into the stuff of fiction. How can raw data - historical, scientific, or technical information - create drama, inspire metaphor, drive character? And how, from a practical craft perspective, can and should we use such information in the service of story?

Meet the Presenter(s)

Picture of Tara Ison


Tara Ison

Tara Ison is the author of three novels: The List (Scribner), A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber), a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Rockaway (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press), featured as one of the "Best Books of Summer" in O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2013. Ball, a short story collection, was published in 2015, and her collection of essays, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, was the 2015 PEN Southwest Book Award winner for Creative Nonfiction. Her short fiction, essays, poetry and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Salon, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, Nerve.com, Black Clock, TriQuarterly, The Mississippi Review, The Santa Monica Review, Publishers Weekly, The Week, LA Weekly, O, the Oprah Magazine, numerous anthologies. She is also the co-writer of the cult film Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead.


Learn more about Tara Ison