Cynthia Banham: 'Writing is a dangerous act'

In this Winter series we've already welcomed Cynthia Zarin, Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and the translator Shaina Brassard, Tim Conley and Samuel Rigg. We bring down the curtain with Cynthia Banham and her short story Swimming With Crocodiles.

Banham confesses that she shares her protagonist's passion for rewilding, but insists that her short story both is and isn't about the author: "You don't really control what finds its way into your story."

After losing her legs following a plane crash in 2007, Banham says that one of the few things that gave her some measure of control was writing. "My only way to avoid the grief overwhelming me was to retreat to my computer and my notebook and to write."

It took Banham seven years before she could start writing about the accident, and then another three before publishing her memoir, A Certain Light. She delves further back into her family history in Mother Shadow, due in April 2026, but says that fiction is a liberation.

"Writing memoir I've found to be really tricky morally, ethically," Banham explains. "There's a freedom in writing fiction."

But that freedom is not without risk, she adds. "This is a whole new level of danger, where you're in constant danger of offending. And I think about that quite a lot."

That's it for this Winter season. We'll be back in Spring.

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