A special talk with Visiting Writer James Simmons III:  A History of Ghost: The Alchemy of Expropriating Family History to Conjure Fiction

This talk will focus on the process of using the archives to write fiction. James Simmons will discuss how he used primary and secondary sources to write his recently-published speculative historical fiction novel - A Ghost Among Magnolias (Lanternfish Press, 2026). Together we will look at the newspaper articles, family lore, personal history and historical texts which inspired this story about his ancestors, some of whom were from Milledgeville. We will also investigate the question: What responsibility (if any) does an artist have to historical accuracy? The novel begins in Atlanta, with several chapters set in Milledgeville. 

James Simmons wrote the second and third draft of his first novel A Ghost Among Magnolias at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in the winter of 2022. He is trained as a performer/ playwright and holds an MFA in theater from Sarah Lawrence College. He’s worked with theater companies like Dixon Place, St. Anne’s Warehouse and LaMaMa ETC. He spends most of his time playing Legos and debating which superpowers are the best with his wife and two children in Brooklyn, New York, where he lives.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Georgia Studies at GCSU, the Departments of English and History and Lockerly Arboretum.