The Villanova English Department is celebrating its 27th year of hosting the Villanova Literary Festival, a series of talks throughout the Spring Semester that include authors and poets who participate in readings, Q&As and book signings. The first event of the 27th Villanova Literary Festival brought author Rachel Heng to campus on February 4th to read from her second novel The Great Reclamation.
Professor Alan Drew, MFA, Director of the Literary Festival, spoke on some of the achievements of the festival and introduced the first event of the four event series, all of which are open to the public. To kick off the first event, two creative writing students took the mic.
Heng was introduced by students Lily Renga and Loghan Hirkey, who detailed Heng’s literary work and numerous awards. Of the novel, Hirkey said that it “encapsulates the historical turmoil of the time.”
Born and raised in Singapore, Heng attended Columbia University for her undergraduate degree in comparative literature. She then went back to Singapore to work for the government in finance after her undergraduate degree. Afterward, she received her Master’s of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin.
Heng captured the attention of the audience at Falvey Speakers Corner with a reading from her novel. She read for a few minutes from the first chapter of her novel, noting that “…called upon [my] lived experiences for inspiration.”
The story follows a young boy throughout his life during the Japanese invasion of Singapore after the British occupation following World War II. When asked if she knew whether or not she knew if she wanted to write about her home country she replied that even when she wasn’t writing about Singapore “…it always comes back to where I am from.” She talked of her experience as an immigrant in the United States, and how she found writing as a young woman in New York City. She said that at 18, she did not even want to be a writer.
Her first novel was not even historical fiction, it was speculative fiction. When asked about the change in direction for her writing, Heng said that “they have a lot in common even though they’re so different.”
She talked about how the setting in both of her stories ended up becoming their own character, and when that character came to life, she found they were more alike than not. She also wanted to explore more questions of autonomy under oppressive structures, and she found that historical fiction lends itself best for the themes she wanted to explore.
She also spoke about the difficulties of writing historical fiction. One student asked how she decided what information to keep within her novel, and what details she had to cut. She said she spent years researching, formally and informally, and made the metaphor that “You have to make the clay before you throw the pot.” She said one of the hardest elements of research was knowing when to actually stop. Heng even said that she still does research to this day on details she can’t even add now that the book had been finished and published for nearly two years.
While the event was somewhat short, only lasting an hour, the advice and knowledge that Rachel Heng brought to the talk was inspiring, and solidified in the minds of the audience why she had won her many awards. She spoke about her extremely research heavy third novel that has no release date yet. But while she works on that novel, she continues to teach creative writing as an assistant professor at Wesleyan University in New York.
