Toronto novelist, essayist and scholar Randy Boyagoda

Novelist and scholar Randy Boyagoda on being a Catholic intellectual and writing fiction

Is being a Catholic intellectual a help or a hindrance?

I’m aware of myself as part of a living and unfolding tradition that calls me to create work worthy of the dignity of the human person, and consistent with my conviction we’re made in the likeness and image of God. The hindrance is when either critics, or worse, supporters expect me to place the dictates of faith above the dictates of art, whereas the more demanding and engaging opportunity is to put these in tension with each other.

Is it harder to create characters like you or different from you?

While I was writing my two most recent novels Original Prin and Dante’s Indiana, my wife observed that I can do whatever I want with characters who resemble me and her and my parents, in service of the story – but doing whatever I wanted with our four daughters wasn’t worth their later reading the novel and wondering if that’s what their father thought of them. I agreed. The novels feature four daughters, yes, but without any direct connection. That was hard to get right from the vantages of both the imaginative and the familial.

Any advice for young Christians wanting to write fiction?

Read the living and the dead, not just one or the other. Read Christian writers and non-Christian writers. Read book reviews and literary criticism. Above all else, read more than write.

Randy Boyagoda is a novelist, essayist and scholar who teaches English at the University of Toronto. His books include Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square (Random House, 2015). He was born in Oshawa to Sri Lankan parents and holds a PhD from Boston University.