Hey all I’m Taylor, and I am so excited to be a part of this festival!

Here is an interview I did with Sorayya Khan, a fantastic novelist who wrote the catalogue essay for the festival about her trip to Banda Aceh. You can read the essay here: http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/festessay/website. She will also be giving a presentation on her trip on Friday April 4^th at 11am.

1. What was your reason/inspiration behind doing the research and writing

for the festival essay?

The research for the festival essay is a result of a Constance Saltonstall Foundation Artist Grant in Creative Non-Fiction(The foundation's mission is to support visual and literary artists in New York State, especially in the Finger Lakes Region.) I applied for the grant because of my interest in interviewing tsunami survivors and my hope that I would eventually write a collection of essays that reflects on their experience.  I spent three weeks in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in May of 2007.

Specifically, in my writing as a novelist, I'm interested in the relationship between the personal and the political--which is another way of saying that I'm interested in the relationship between a character or a family and the larger structures in which the character or family exists.  After seeing televised scenes of devastation following the tsunami and realizing they looked very much like war scenes, I started to think about the tsunami, much like war, as a structure -- an environmental reality -- and wondered how families were surviving it.

Being asked to write the catalogue essay for FLEFF forced me to begin to process my trip in my writing.  Since returning from Banda Aceh, I

had been immersed in meeting a deadline for a fiction manuscript. Patti Zimmerman did me a favor by inviting me to write the essay because it required me to make time to put down some initial thoughts regarding my experience.

2. Would you provide the blog readers with a little bit of information about your current novel Noor and your upcoming novel Five Queen's Road?

NOOR is set in Islamabad, Pakistan and examines the legacy of the 1971 war which gave birth to Bangladesh.  In particular, it deals with the

complicated relationship between the war, one soldier, and his family.

The story depicts an extraordinary child, Noor, who through her artwork enables her mother and her grandfather to confront their pasts. NOOR is a novel about the effects of war and the possibilities inherent in love and forgiveness.

FIVE QUEEN'S ROAD weaves together family saga and national history over a fifteen year period following Partition in South Asia. It is structured along alternating narrative lines, the earlier one a story that begins during Partition in 1947 and the later one which follows the same characters ten years later.  While the novel is primarily set in Lahore, there are scenes which occur in other places, including Winston Salem, Chicago, Amsterdam, Maastrict, and Vienna.  The novel is about memory and family and how people survive horrors like Partition and World War II.  The story bridges characters with different histories across time--all in part of the world that is now every day news.

3. Do you have any comments/feelings/excitement for any part of this festival?

I love the festival's exciting and all-encompassing definition of environment and am looking forward to the wide variety of subjects it will be showcasing.

4. Have you worked with any other festivals?

I have not worked with any other film festivals.

5. Do you have any words of advice for people who plan to attend FLEFF?

Attend as many events as you're able to (without missing too many classes).