What do you do when you’re done reading a book but not quite done with the world you had just been a part of?
For Liz Fenwick, author of the Cornwall series, the only option was to take the responsibility of writing them herself.
“I would make little books out of paper and staple them together and that abiding need to tell stories never left me,” she told Gulf News during the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
It was many, many years later that Fenwick finally had a book published, but she was able to fall back on several life experiences as well as her always active imagination.
“From when I was playing with dolls and making the dolls act out whatever stories I was creating, I never stopped going to that imaginary world. I think some people leave that make-belief world behind when they get to a certain point in life, but I think if writers are honest, they never do,” she said.
While her native county Cornwall features heavily in her books as well as in their titles, her life in Dubai – over 11 years in all – is also an aspiration for her. She never planned to write about the city, though, claiming enough expat tales had been written from the region.
“I think the world has a very distorted image of this part of the world and I really wanted an authentic female voice to be heard. So I am hugely excited to be mentoring an Emirati writer to hopefully polish her novel sufficiently … so that it can be seen. Because, it’s a very special part of the world here,” she said.
The distortion, according to Fenwick, doesn’t just happen through a Western narrative, but also a largely male narrative.
“I went to an all women’s university and they challenged us to be uncommon women, to really strive out. I thought that I have enough power to give something back, and hopefully, I can bring an authentic female voice to a wider audience.”
