The novelist on bringing Virginia Woolf back to life – and why Hanif Kureishi is wrong about creative writing courses
British novelist Maggie Gee: 'I don't feel secure, to put it mildly.' Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian
Maggie Gee was born in Poole, Dorset and has written 12 novels, including The White Family, which was shortlisted for the Orange prize. She has also written a writer's memoir, 2010's My Animal Life, and a collection of short stories. Gee is vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature and a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.
Your new novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, imagines the writer coming back to life in modern-day New York. How did you arrive at that idea?
I went to New York to read Woolf's manuscripts in the Berg collection. When I got there I learned that you can't access them physically because they are too valuable – you have to view them on microfilm. So I was sitting there, longing for her, and I started to imagine what she would have made of today's world.
I'm sure that the adventurer in her would have loved to come back. The fun in the book – because it is definitely a comedy – comes from her discovering the internet for the first time, seeing bookshops closing down, going shopping. She loved clothes; I think she would have enjoyed Bloomingdales. I've always felt that, although of course it is terrible that she drowned, she would not have wanted us to focus on that. She was overwhelmingly positive about life.
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Your new novel, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan, imagines the writer coming back to life in modern-day New York. How did you arrive at that idea?I went to New York to read Woolf's manuscripts in the Berg collection. When I got there I learned that you can't access them physically because they are too valuable – you have to view them on microfilm. So I was sitting there, longing for her, and I started to imagine what she would have made of today's world.
I'm sure that the adventurer in her would have loved to come back. The fun in the book – because it is definitely a comedy – comes from her discovering the internet for the first time, seeing bookshops closing down, going shopping. She loved clothes; I think she would have enjoyed Bloomingdales. I've always felt that, although of course it is terrible that she drowned, she would not have wanted us to focus on that. She was overwhelmingly positive about life.
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