Shaping Real Lives into Narratives: Heather Clark and Connie Palmen on Truth and Fiction

In this conversational interview, which is hosted and conducted by the UvA literature scholar Rudolph Glitz, the acclaimed American author and critic Heather Clark and the celebrated Dutch novelist Connie Palmen reflect on the above and similar questions drawing on their own writing experience. In Heather Clark’s case, relevant works include, on the one hand, her Pulitzer-nominated biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet (2020), and, on the other, her recent (auto)biographically informed novel The Scrapbook (2025), which she based on a Word War II document found in her grandparents’ attic. In Connie Palmen’s case, one could argue that her entire spectacular oeuvre – from her debut novel De Wetten (1991) all the way to her current work in progress – constitutes an experimental engagement with these questions as well as the philosophical assumptions behind them.

Join us and listen to Heather and Connie explore the challenges of shaping real lives into narratives, the responsibilities of the biographer, and the freedoms—and risks—of fiction.

Speakers 

​Heather Clark is a biographer, literary critic, and novelist. Her six books include Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the LA Times Book Prize for biography. Her most recent publication is her 2025 novel The Scrapbook, which tells the story of an intense first love haunted by history and family memory. Heather holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard and a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford, and was formerly Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield, UK.  

​Rudolph Glitz is Assistant Professor at the department of English Literature and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Apart from his various teaching and administrative duties, he works on the literary representation of generation conflicts and the life stages. He has published a monograph and various articles on Modernist family sagas, Shakespeare, computer game historiography, and poetry. Rudolph holds a master’s degree in European Literature from Cambridge and a doctorate in English from Oxford.​ 

Connie Palmen is a Dutch author. She studied Literature and Philosophy at The University of Amsterdam. Palmen debuted with the novel De wetten (1991), which was translated in 24 countries. De wetten was published in the UK and in the USA as The Laws and was voted the 1992 European Novel of the Year. Many prize-winning novels followed. In September 2015 Connie Palmen published her novel Jij zegt het (Your Story, My Story), based on the true love story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Her latest book is Voornamelijk vrouwen (2023).