CAA BC CHAPTER EVENT – Kevin Chong on the Writing of The Double Life of Benson Yu

Our presenter on April 22 will be Kevin Chong, author of seven works of fiction and non-fiction. His latest work, The Double Life of Benson Yu, was shortlisted for the 2023 Scotia Bank Giller Prize. It tells the story of a writer struggling to hatch a novel from  his not so happy memories of growing up in a housing project in Chinatown. Kevin is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He has been a reader and a juror for several CBC Short Story contests. He will be one of the three jurors for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. Kevin will share with us his own struggles of writing The Double Life of Benson Yu. He will address several issues all memoir or autobiography writers have to contend with. What to include and what to leave out? Must you tell how it really was or can you produce a sanitized version? Can you not tell it all and still maintain the integrity of your work? How dark can your life story be? If you try and fail to write an autobiography or a memoir, can you turn the material into a novel?