Novelist Rebecca Makkai offers feedback on students’ work in a Creative Writing class.
Acclaimed novelist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai encouraged Milton Academy students to embrace reading as a powerful way to study history and engage with the past.
“So that you can deeply understand,” she explained, “here’s what people were thinking. Here’s what they were going through. Here is what they got wrong. Here’s why they got it wrong.”
Makkai, author of The Great Believers and I Have Some Questions for You, spent two days on campus as this semester’s Bingham Visiting Writer. She visited creative writing classes, workshopped student writing, and shared insights into her creative process during an Upper School assembly.
When asked for advice on becoming a writer, Makkai highlighted the value of theater. “You learn so much in doing that [theatre] about story and how plot is constructed,” she said. “Even your favorite book—you might read it three times, right? When you’re in a play, you’re going to read and experience that play 200 times. You have a different understanding, you’re making creative decisions, and you’re having conversations about motivation. That’s true whether you’re running the spotlight, directing, or acting.”
Her latest novel, I Have Some Questions for You, nods to her theater background. The book’s protagonist, Bodie Kane, is a former stage tech who returns to her boarding school to teach a podcasting course—only to rehash details of a classmate’s death. Makkai read an excerpt from the novel at the assembly.
A student asked how Makkai approaches time shifts in her stories. “The amazing thing about fiction is that not only can you leap years forward in time, but you can also leap backward,” she said. “Real life always moves forward—we don’t get to see what happened on this campus a hundred years ago, on this exact day. But in fiction, you can do that. And when I do look forward in time, I’m interested in what has changed—how things got forgotten, remembered, or misremembered, how has the world changed, how have people changed, and there’s a lot there.”
The Bingham Endowment Fund for Creative Writing was established in 1987 to benefit Milton Academy’s creative writing program. The fund brings esteemed authors and poets to campus, giving student writers incredible opportunities to hear feedback from these guests, learn about their creative processes, and listen to readings of poetry and prose. Recent Bingham visiting writers have included Jamaica Kincaid, Paul Yoon, Dorianne Laux, Kamila Shamsie, Lauren Groff, and Richard Blanco.
You can learn more about Rebecca Makkai and her work here.
