Writing Matters series welcomes author Elizabeth Crane

Writer Elizabeth Crane explores her relationship with her opera singer mother in her new novel “The History of Great Things,” which tells the intertwining stories of a writer — Betsy Crane — and her opera singer mother.

“I tried to keep the very basic facts,” Crane said. “I’m a writer, she’s an opera singer. I was born this year, she was born that year. But the storylines are different. What I hope is that I actually captured the dynamic that existed between us and the relationship that we had. I think the characters are very true to life, even though the scenarios that I put them in are not.”

Some parts of the story are based in fact, like how she cried for months after moving to New York with her mother after kindergarten and grew up attending musicals despite her mother’s meager earnings. Many others are based on Crane’s imagination, like the litany of questions the young Betsy asks about her new city.

“I honestly don’t know (if I asked all those questions),” Crane said. “I probably did. But it’s possible I didn’t. But I definitely cried. The crying I was reminded of for many years.”

Crane will read from “The History of Great Things,” discuss how the book came to be, and share her history as a writer and teacher on April 23 at the Arts Center of Oak Park as part of the Writing Matters series created by author and Oak Parker Elizabeth Berg. Crane, who teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert but previously spent 13 years living in Chicago and teaching undergraduate and graduate creative writing classes. The advice she gives her students most often is that the more they read, the better they’ll write. That’s a lesson Crane has taken to heart, finding inspiration for “The History of Great Things” in “Percival Everett” by Virgil Russell, which in part explores the relationship between a father and son.

“The History of Great Things” imagines a mother and daughter telling each other stories about the other’s lives, even if they have to make up the details.

“Because my mother and I were close in a lot of ways and kept things private in a lot of other ways I was really interested in what each of us might have to say about what the other’s life was like — if we had any real insight into the other person,” Crane said. “My hope was that it was something that other mothers and daughters could relate to.”

Crane’s work has in turn inspired others to adapt it into different forms. A film adaptation of Crane’s novel “We Only Know So Much,” will be released later this year. Crane co-wrote the script and spent the entire shoot on set, working with the filmmaker to decide what scenes to include and what to cut and add to make the story work in a new medium and adhere to the independent film’s budget constraints.

She is currently working a new collection of short stories called “Turf.”

“I feel like I can almost do anything in short stories,” Crane said. “I can be weird, the prose can be weird, it can take really strange turns whereas in a novel it’s much harder to sustain something kookier over a long period of time.”

Writing Matters presents Elizabeth Crane

When: 7-9 p.m. April 23

Where: The Arts Center of Oak Park, 200 N. Oak Park Ave.

Tickets: $10

Information: www.elizabeth-berg.net