Samantha Harvey
Samantha Harvey
Samantha Harvey, is an English author. She completed the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA course in 2005, and has also completed a postgraduate course in philosophy and a PhD in Creative Writing. Her first novel is The Wilderness, a book about the unravelling effect of Alzheimer's disease. Her second novel, All Is Song, is a novel about moral and filial duty, and about the choice between questioning and conforming...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionYouTube Star
Date of Birth30 May 1993
CityIpswich, England
As the U.S., much of Europe, and the U.K. shift toward the political right, the rhetoric grows more insular, defensive, and protective.
One of the things the novel can do is address big questions in ways that are accessible to people. It's not that I want to teach people, but these are the things that interest me, and this is my medium for exploring ideas, and I think the potential of novels to do that is massive.
With 'All Is Song,' I tried to construct a very traditional narrative that pulls no tricks.
We use the same possessive pronouns for everything, but do we own our lives or sisters or husbands in the same way we own our shoes? Do we own any of them at all?
With twenty six letters, you can create anything you like - any person, any world, any place, any emotion. And they are so potent, so powerful, and at the same time, they're marks on the page, and that's all. There's nothing else to them.
What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.
When we fall in love, we feel that this person is ours and we are theirs by our mutual volition, and we know they could leave - we know that because they are free, and their freedom is part of the thrill.
When there's change, and people fear things, they become more dogmatic in their views. They lash out: you can see it in the media, scapegoating and penal sentencing.