Truth and Storytelling
Details
How do writers draw from real life without being bound by it? What responsibility do they have to the truth and to their readers?
In this conversation, Jayne Marshall and Carys Shannon explore the creative space where reality and imagination meet. The discussion will also consider how truth itself can become a storytelling device - a trope used to build tension, subvert expectation, or explore emotional weight within a narrative.
Join Jayne and Carys for a thoughtful exploration of authenticity, invention and truth in storytelling.
About the speakers:
Jayne Marshall is fiction writer and essayist. She holds the master’s in creative writing, with distinction, from the University of Oxford. Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies around the world, including in the Bath Spa University affiliated Transnational Literature (UK), Prairie Schooner (USA) and as a finalist in the Aesthetica Creative Writing Prize (UK). Her debut story and essay collection, A Line Drawn or Printed: Six Routes Through Madrid, was published in June 2025 by Modern Odyssey Books. She is Associate Editor of The Madrid Review.
Carys Shannon is originally from North Gower, Swansea, and now divides her time between Wales and the Spanish Pyrenees. She has had short stories published by Honno Press, Parthian Books and Mslexia Magazine, as well as broadcast on BBC Radio 4. When not writing, Carys is happiest enjoying slow time in big nature.