Studium Generale: Life in the Tower of Story

How and why does fiction work? What happens when a writer makes real people in our shared real world care about non-existent people in an imagined world? Speaking from the Tower of Story, the rougher annex of Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song, David Mitchell will share his thoughts on the theory and practice of being a professional fantasist. The co-presenter is Ionica Smeets.

David Mitchell is a novelist and screenwriter, known for the modern classic Cloud Atlas, which was listed by The Guardian in 2019 as one of the 10 best novels of the 21st century. His books contain many references to the Netherlands and Dutch history, particularly The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and his latest novel, Utopia Avenue. Mitchell has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize twice and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time in 2007.

Ionica Smeets is a professor of Science Communication at Leiden University, where she studies, teaches, and practices science communication. She is a co-founder of the National Centre of Expertise on Science and Society. Together with Edward van de Vendel and Floor de Goede, she wrote the award-winning children’s book Rekenen voor je leven, which has been translated into (among others) Korean, Spanish, and German.