Katie Kitamura explored the tension between authorial intent and interpretation in her book talk Thursday.

Kitamura – the award-winning author of “Intimacies” and “A Separation” – read an excerpt from her newest novel “Audition” at the Hammer Museum as a part of UCLA professor Mona Simpson’s “Some Favorite Writers” series. “Audition” follows a middle-aged actress after she is approached by a young man claiming to be her son; Kitamura’s most recent work is a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Maria Schmeeckle, an attendee of the event, said she was inspired by the creativity of Kitamura’s storytelling.

“This is a level of creativity that is beyond what I personally think I could do well, and it is so fascinating to see what people create out of their imaginations and how true it can be to human experience, even though it is fiction,” Schmeeckle said.

At the event, Kitamura said she was inspired by a headline in The New York Times that read, “A Stranger Told Me He Was My Son.”

“I never clicked on the link, and I never read the article, because, in part, I already knew I wanted to write a book about that headline and because I had the sense that the article would probably resolve the mystery of the headline, and there’d be some kind of narrative explanation for that mysterious tension between the stranger and son,” Kitamura said. “Perhaps there was some other perfectly logical explanation, and I was much more tantalized by the illogical nature of that proposition.”

Kitamura read an excerpt that centered around the performance of an aging actor attempting to hide his dementia. She added that the passage dealt with themes of authorial intention and interpretation, which were central to the novel as a whole.

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Sara Hov, an attendee of the event, said she found listening to Kitamura’s reading of the passage helped strengthen her understanding of it.

“When a writer reads their work, you hear nuances that maybe aren’t how you read it in your head,” Hov said.

Kitamura also answered questions from Simpson and the audience about her writing process and her future work. One audience member asked Kitamura about her research process surrounding theater, and Kitamura responded that she did not do formal research during her drafting process, instead relying on her experiences being surrounded by actors in New York during the late 2000s. She added that she was particularly interested in protagonists that dealt with the art of interpretation. In her past three works, Kitamura wrote about a translator, live interpreter and an actress.

“I think she does a lovely job answering questions,” Hov said. “She takes each question like a gift. It’s amazing to hear how she approaches because her answers too often surprise me.”

Kitamura also said the heart of each of her novels is the exploration of an underlying ethical dilemma. She added that “Audition” asks the question of how to reconcile with an impossible demand from a stranger, and what responsibilities are there to the stranger.

Eden Campbell, a third-year economics student at UCLA, said she was inspired by Kitamura’s talent and critical acclaim as a writer.

“As someone who has just started to write for class, for the first time, I could see how much further I have to go,” Campbell said. “It’s so impressive to see and to talk to someone who has gone down that whole path, and been able to execute something like that.”

Hov said she found Kitamura’s surprising answers to questions refreshing in comparison to the monotony of algorithmic loops online. She added that she was fascinated by Kitamura’s sources of creative inspiration, and wrote down the names of all of the films and plays Kitamura referenced – among them, “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman and “Aliens” by Annie Baker.

Campbell, a student in Simpson’s creative writing course, said she reads the novels featured in the “Some Favorite Writers” series, and attends the events as a part of her course. She added that she was impressed with the pacing and tension of the novel. Speaking to Kitamura with her creative writing class before the main event, Campbell said she was inspired by Kitamura’s drive to take creative risks in her writing.

“For anyone doing anything creative, you see great work and then you look at your own work, and that gap is what allows you to keep going,” Campbell said.