The author of the this year’s Go Big Read selection spoke about her book as well as her experiences combining research and art at Union South Monday evening.
Lauren Redniss, author of Radioactive, said she wanted to talk about the book itself and also about the story behind the story.
Redniss said she started telling stories combining research, reporting, artwork and design several years ago when she began contributing op-art pieces to the New York Times.
In her talk, Redniss shared examples of her pieces, including one she did shortly after 9/11. Another depicted a unit of World War II camouflage painters composed of gay men to address debates of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law.
“These op-art pieces combine oral history and on-location drawing, to look at issues in the news in hopefully unexpected ways,” Redniss said.
She said as she worked on these op-art pieces, much of the story-behind-the-story details were left out “in order to make the piece fit for a relatively, limited, black-and-white space in a newspaper.”
Redniss said she was looking for a format where she could highlight details and work in color. For these reasons, she said she decided to write a book.
She also spoke on her first book titled Century Girl that documented the life of a woman who danced on Broadway.
She said at the time when she started the book, the woman was 99 years old.
“Upon completing Century Girl, which was a story in many ways about performance and spectacle and was printed on shiny paper, I wanted to go in the opposite direction,” Redniss said. “I decided to tell a story about interior lives and invisible forces.”
Redniss also spoke to her Go Big Read selection, Radioactive, which she said is about the interplay between the text and the artwork.
Redniss said the book looks beyond the lives and romances of Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered radium and polonium and coined the term “radioactivity.” She said it flashes forward in time to look at the modern day repercussions of their work.
Redniss said as part of her creative process she went to Hiroshima, Japan and viewed historical sites and monuments and interviewed survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on the city in 1945.
“I like to think that on some level, by going out and doing reporting, by making observations that on some level that feeling, that kind of poetic mystery seeps into the book,” Redniss said.
UW Junior Sara Hatzenbeller, who attended the event, said she thought Redniss did a very good job explaining how her artwork paired conjunctively with the text.
“I think it was something most people were curious about. My questions were answered and I learned many new things as well about her views on abstract art and subliminal storytelling,” Hatzenbeller said. “It was very benefical.”
Interim Chancellor David Ward said he chose Radioactive as this year’s Go Big Read book because he thought it was an extraordinary book that is striking and impossible to put down.
Ward said more than 90 courses are using Radioactive in this semester, ranging from English to Biology classes.
“Her work is the definition of innovation and with Radioactive, she stayed true to her unique vision,” Ward said. “Giving voice in an entirely new way to a story many of us thought we already knew.”
