Authors find inspiration from all different kinds of media. For award-winning novelist and Brandeis aluma Jennifer Gilmore '92, that inspiration came in the form of her grandmother's diary. She was sorting through her grandmother's possessions when she came across the diary, and upon leafing through it, she was struck by the thought that it could have been written by anyone of any generation. Taking that idea, she went on to write her first novel, Golden Country, released in 2006, which follows the saga of Jewish immigrants in New York through multiple generations. On the other hand, bestselling author Anita Diamant's motivation to write her latest novel, Day After Night, came from her experience on a trip to Israel, where she took a tour of the remnants of Holocaust detention centers. She recognized a story that needed to be told in the lives of people who escaped Atlit, a detention camp during which the British jailed Holocaust survivors going to Palestine. Her novel depicts four characters in similar situations, young women who have to create new lives for themselves after surviving the Holocaust and fleeing to Palestine. Diamant says she was inspired by Virginia Woolf's feminist novel A Room of One's Own as well.

Both Jewish female novelists, Gilmore and Diamant came together on April 13 to discuss what goes into their writing in a panel titled "The Personal and the Political: Historical Fiction and the Jewish Experience." The event, sponsored by the Creative Writing program and moderated by Prof. John Plotz (ENG), featured each author reading an excerpt from her latest novel, speaking about her writing process and then answering audience questions. Although Gilmore and Diamant have each written so-called historical novels, including Gilmore's latest book, Something Red, they differ in their opinions on what it means to write historical fiction.

Diamant was inspired by the history she encountered in Israel, but oddly enough, she doesn't consider herself a historical novelist. Diamant is perhaps best known for her first novel, The Red Tent, a New York Times bestseller that is a retelling of Bible stories from the perspective of Dinah, Jacob's only daughter. However, despite the historical time periods that both of these novels are set in, Diamant refrains from categorizing herself as a historical novelist because she believes her novels are just as much about fictionalized stories as they are about the time periods during which they take place. In contrast, Gilmore believes that "all novels are historical to some extent," since they record and reflect the views of the times. She pointed out that even if a book is written about the contemporary period, by the time it comes out it is no longer current, and so each book is a time capsule from its era.

In her latest novel, Something Red, Gilmore tells the story of a boy who attends Brandeis in 1979 and becomes involved in social activism and the radical movement. Gilmore pored over photographs from the period in order to maintain historical accuracy and capture the mood of the times correctly, paying great attention to detail.

When asked why she made the decision to name Brandeis as the protagonist's college rather than simply implying its identity, she responded that the more specific a writer can get, the better, because readers relate to details. She believes that including details such as cultural references from the era or products that were popular at the time helps evoke a sense of the decade for the reader. Diamant agreed, even suggesting that as soon as the reader spots one factual inaccuracy in the book, his faith in the author's credibility is destroyed and he cannot continue to believe the narrative. However, she also warns against overloading a novel with detail, in which case she says her editor tells her, "Your research is showing."

Another issue the two authors addressed was that of the role of Judaism in their novels. Gilmore spoke to the Jewish theme in Something Red, saying that the Jewish experience is innately tied to political radicalism, and so it only made sense for her protagonist to discover his inner radical while at Brandeis. On the other hand, Diamant discussed the difficulty of writing a novel relating to the Holocaust because of the inherent issues of discussing such a deeply emotional, disturbing event, especially one which took place so recently in history. She felt it was an issue she could tackle because, as she says, "I never learned what the Holocaust was. I knew what it was, like a table or a chair." But rather than trying to tell a Holocaust survivor's story, Diamant specified that in her book she tells four fictional characters' stories, to which she hopes the eader can relate. "Characters should be possible, probable ... inevitable," as Diamant said.

Both novelists presented themselves articulately and intelligently. They provided insightful words of wisdom-enough to convince people to purchase their books, which were sold at the end of the panel.

The panel, which was split between talking about their latest novels and the creative writing process, proved a success. Although some of the questions addressed to them were challenging or critical, they put great thought into each response and answered quite knowledgeably. On a closing note, they even managed to bring some light-hearted humor into the discussion. When discussing the hardship of writing a novel about such recent history, Diamant admitted that Gilmore's latest novel was set in a more recent time period than hers, implying that it would be harder to maintain a sense of realism due to reader's recollections of having lived through the 1980s. However, she laughingly pointed out that Gilmore's struggle was nothing compared to hers because "the Holocaust trumps everything.