Ramona Naddaff, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and founding director of Art of Writing, interviewed Sonali Deranayigala, author of Wave, the New York Times bestseller and PEN Ackerley Prize (2013) winning memoir about all-consuming grief in the wake of a tremendous loss: In 2004, Deraniyagala was on vacation with her family on the coast of Sri Lanka when a tsunami struck, killing her husband, their two sons and her parents.
Prior to the lecture, students in Dr. Naddaff's Rhetoric 121 class — part of Art of Writing — had read Wave and workshopped questions to ask Dr. Deraniyagala. Rhetoric undergraduate students Amber Abruzzo, Brian Basurto-Vargas , Anish Gupta, Demetrios Leones and Ashlyn Reynolds asked Deraniyagala about her creative process. See the Berkeley Arts and Humanities website for more details.
Watch a video of the April 10, 2024 conversation, followed by a Q&A with the audience. Audio from the program is available on a Berkeley Talks podcast.