Roundtable: World Building for Historical Fiction

Today we have another of our roundtables and we’re focusing on one of the hardest things for an author to get right: world building. Because this issue is complex, I’m going to hold two world building roundtables, one for writers trying to establish place in either a speculative work or a work that takes place in a non-U.S. location, and this one today about world building for historical fiction. What is world building? How do you it without boring the reader to death or brazenly showing all of your research? And how do you work it into your story line? We’ve got four incredible writers joining us for the discussion: Allison Amend, Rachel Barenbaum, Janet Rich Edwards, and Hesse Phillips.Watch a recording here. This audio/video version is available for only a few weeks. Missed it? Check out the podcast version above or on your favorite podcast platform.I don’t charge for subscriptions, but if you’d like, you can support my work with with a small donation here.To find our roundtable authors’ latest book as well as many other books by our guests, visit our Bookshop page.Looking for a writing community? Join our Facebook page.Allison Amend is a professor of creative writing at Lehman College, CUNY in New York City and is the author of a short story collection and three novels.Rachel Barenbaum is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars and the creator and host of the literary show Check This Out that airs on NHPR and focuses on emerging and diverse authors.Janet Rich Edwards is a graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. She is a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.Hesse Phillips‘s debut novel Lightborne was a finalist in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair and a London Times’ Top Historical Fiction Book of 2024. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 7amnovelist.substack.com