Imagined Histories

In the first event of the series ‘Living Archives,’ Green College writer in residence Theresa Muñoz will be in conversation with novelist Madeleine Thien, discussing how to weave archives and research materials into poetry and fiction. Theresa Muñoz’s latest poetry collection Archivum explores objects belonging to writer Muriel Spark, actor Maggie Smith, the 19th century slave owner’s daughter Eliza Junor, and psychotherapist Marie Battle Singer. Madeleine Thien’s recent novel The Book of Records merges the lives of philosopher Hannah Arendt, poet Du Fu, and scholar Baruch Spinoza into a narrative about father and daughter on a shore-lined migrant compound known as ‘the Sea’. 

Anchored by themes of migration, displacement, and legacy, the authors will discuss the challenges and joys of archival research and how it shapes one’s creative practice. 

This event is open to the general public and does not require registration (but please note that our seating is limited). A reception in the Piano Lounge, Graham House, will follow this event. 

Dr Theresa Muñoz is a Canadian poet living in Edinburgh, Scotland, with a PhD from the University of Glasgow. She has published one collection of poetry, Settle, which was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Poetry Prize. Her second collection Archivum, an exploration of what it means to engage with archival artefacts, is published by Pavilion Poetry (2025) and was nominated in the Saltire Literary Prizes 2025. She has been awarded the Scottish Muriel Spark Centenary Award, Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, Creative Scotland Award, and shortlisted for The Kavya Prize and a Sky Arts Royal Society of Literature Writers Award. She has directed several literary initiatives in the UK, including the Newcastle Poetry Festival and the James Berry Poetry Prize. 

Madeleine Thien is the author of a collection of stories and four novels, including The Book of Records, named one of Obama’s Best Books of 2025, and Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Folio Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New York Review of Books, and elsewhere, and been translated into twenty-seven languages. She lives in Montreal.