ABSTRACT
In 1967, William Styron published The Confessions of Nat Turner, a biographical novel that sparked a major controversy because the white writer wrote a novel in the voice of the black man, Nat Turner, and took many liberties with the historical and biographical facts. For instance, Styron had his protagonist have a homosexual encounter and baptized a gay man, two invented scenes. In a famous 1968 forum about the uses of history in fiction, Styron clarified what authors of biofiction actually do and why the liberties they take are justified and even culturally beneficial. This forum marks a major turning point in the history of biofiction, and I show why.
