The Kelly Writers Series, an event which, in the words of its director Eugene Gloria, “allows our small community to host world-renowned writers along with our own creative writing faculty”, commenced Wednesday night with its opening act, Chris White, DePauw English Professor, playwright, singer, director, and now critically-acclaimed novelist.
White’s featured piece, entitled The Life List of Adrian Mandrick, is her first novel, which Library Journal called “an intense, poignant debut… This engaging, unusual novel successfully combines the best elements of a psychological portrait, a travel adventure, and a suspenseful mystery.” It was also named a Best New Book of 2018 by The Chicago Review of Books.
In spite of these accolades and the overall success of White’s first-ever novel, she says it did not come easily. “[The Life List of Adrian Mandrick] existed in pieces...for almost seventeen years,” said White. Previously White has been successful in the world of dramatic writing, but says she always knew deep down that this story was different, and intended from the beginning for it to manifest as a novel rather than a play.
White said that two things that she learned the hard way throughout this process were “relentless revision and letting go.” The main character Adrian Mandrick is an anesthesiologist and avid bird-watcher, “neither of which I knew anything about,” said White. These were among many meaningful insights into her creative process and the journey of getting a novel published that she shared throughout the evening.
She also gave part of the backstory of how this piece came to be. “It’s actually a pretty direct story, I was on an airplane sitting next to a stranger and he told me a story about a man who was an anesthetist and a birder and how one time he forgot his wife at a gas station, I had just gone through a nasty divorce at the time, and I thought, yeah. That makes sense. And the story just kind of took over. It was so compelling and I needed to understand it more… Now it’s got a lot of me in it too. It’s all kinds of different things.”
The Kelly Writers Series will continue on September 19th at 7:30 PM in the Peeler Art Center Auditorium with New York Times best-selling novelist Alexander Chee.