At The Happy Booker, author Katharine Min (Secondhand World) takes up the truth-or-fiction question:
No, my childhood home did not burn down; my parents are still very much alive; I’m not horribly disfigured; and — reluctantly, I disclose — I’ve never engaged in a menage a trois.
While at The Elegant Variation, author Salvador Placencia (The People of Paper) answers questions, including why a novel instead of a memoir:
Why would I write a memoir? When I was writing The People of Paper I was a twenty-something kid who came from kind and generous parents, I never fought in a war, and I had nothing but the support and love from my friends and family. What business would I have with the memoir? I’m much more interested in the works of the imagination than in my mundane reality.
You go to any author reading and this issue comes up in the Q&A. It’s interesting how important it is to readers and how rarely important it is to writers. Maybe because readers always want stories to be really real?