Rosemary Sullivan recalls her unforgettable adventures in research

Rosemary Sullivan is one of Canada's most distinguished biographers, writing penetrating, detailed histories of people like Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Josef Stalin, andCanadian poets Gwendolyn McEwen, Margaret Atwood and ElizabethSmart. Her list of honours include the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, awarded in 2015 toStalin's Daughter,and the Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction, awarded in 1995 toShadow Maker.

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Below, Sullivan takes the CBC Books Magic 8 Q&A, fielding eight questions from eight writers.

1.Patrick deWitt asks, "What is the last thing you read that made you feel actually jealous?"

JohnVaillant's The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.What an adventure! The story beneath the story (the research, the travel, the encounters) is, for the writer of nonfiction, as exciting as writing the book itself.

2.David Chariandy asks, "Is writing for you an act of freedom? How or how not?"

For me, writing is a compulsion, which is not a synonym for freedom. I cannot be without a book I'm working on. But once I've released the book, and have managed, hopefully, to say what I want to say that might impact on the way people think, it feels like freedom.

3.Heather O'Neill asks, "What's the strangest thing you've done while researching a book?"

I can't decide between interviewing Josef Stalin's grandson Sasha Burdonski in Moscow or spending a weekend at the home of the CIA agent who brought Stalin's daughter to an ambiguous freedom in America.

4.Graeme Smith asks, "As the American performance artist Laurie Anderson said: 'What I really want to know is: Are things getting better? Or are they getting worse?'"

I want to say that things are getting worse, but that is because people live in their Twitter and Facebook silos and there seems to be so much hatred in the world. But then I think in the last century there were two World Wars, in the latter of which 60,000,000 died; atomic bomb threats that caused us to hide under our desks in school drills during the Cold War; and regional wars breaking out in some part of the world almost every day. Human beings seem to be hopeless but maybe if we could save the planet we might say things are getting better.

5. Rachel Cusk asks, "How would you describe your literary style?"

In writing nonfiction, I try for a combination of a compelling narrative that will move people and take them into the minds of my subjects as persons, and a factual narrative based on documentary evidence, so that I can claim, as I do, that I never make anything up.

6.Dianne Warren asks, "What two Canadian writers, living or dead, would you like to see interview each other? Why?"

I would like to see Michael Winter talk with Dionne Brand because I admire them both. How fascinating that would be.

7.Anita Rau Badami asks, "How do you choose your next project?"

Oddly enough, all my books have come to me by serendipity, not by choice.

8.Hiro Kanagawa asks, "When do you feel like a fraud (assuming you do now and then)?"

Perhaps I feel like a fraud between books because each time, as you wait for the next book, you almost feel that you begin without history, as if you've never written anything before.