Victoria Christopher Murray: Finding the Past

Craft: Exploring Creativity

New York Times bestselling author Victoria Christopher Murray has written or cowritten more than 30 novels, including Stand Your Ground and The Personal Librarian. In our discussion, Murray discusses her latest book, Harlem Rhapsody, a historical fiction novel about Jesse Redmond Fauset, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Murray shares her extensive research process, which involved moving to Harlem and reading numerous editions of Crisis Magazine, as well as her discovery of a romantic affair between Fauset and W.E.B. Du Bois. We discuss how she navigates blending historical facts with fiction and she recounts her first story (in elementary school!). She will be at the Columbus Book Festival on July 12 and 13.

Image credit: Three African American women in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, ca. 1925. From http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/passing-passing-peculiarly-american-racial-tradition-approaches-irrelevance