In 2015, writer Dawn Dorland donated her kidney to a stranger as part of a non-directed donation process. In non-directed donations, the donor does not know who the recipient of the organ is and does not get to decide who the organ will be transplanted in. To document her donation, Dorland created a Facebook group to share her experience with her friends and family. After the donation, Dorland posted in the group a letter she had written to the kidney recipient, sharing her thoughts and emotions behind her donation. She wrote, “Throughout my preparation for becoming a donor … I focused a majority of my mental energy on imagining and celebrating you.”

Dorland’s Facebook group about her kidney donation included some friends from Grubstreet, the writing center Dorland had once worked at, whom Dorland noticed were not engaging with her posts. One of these friends was Sonya Larson. Seeing that Larson had not engaged with any posts in the group, Dorland reached out to ask if Larson was aware of Dorland’s donation experience, to which Larson said she was and commended Dorland for her act of kindness. Some time later, a mutual friend of both informed Dorland that Larson had written a story involving a kidney donation which reminded him of Dorland’s own real life experience. When Dorland emailed Larson to ask if their friend’s report was true, Larson confirmed that she had indeed written a story based on the premise of a kidney donation.

Larson’s short story, The Kindest, was critical of the donor-recipient relationship, especially highlighting how she thought white saviorism could become pervasive in such a process. In early drafts of the story, the white savior donor character in the story was named “Dawn,” but Larson later changed it to “Rose.” A published version of the story in American Short Fiction magazine included a letter from Rose, which states, “As I prepared to make this donation, I drew strength from knowing that my recipient would get a second chance at life. I withstood the pain by imagining and rejoicing in YOU.” Dorland immediately saw similarities between the letter in Larson’s story and Dorland’s own letter, so similar, in fact, that she believed that Larson had plagiarized from Dorland.

In the aftermath of the publication and recognition of Larson’s story, and Dorland’s reading of the story, Dorland began asking questions about what obligations writers had towards each other when it came to the ideas behind their writing. When Dorland learned that the city of Boston had planned a mass publication of The Kindest for the Boston Book Festival, she decided to send a cease-and-desist letter to the book festival. Larson’s growing success, Dorland argued, was based on Dorland’s words and personal life story, without any prior consultation with Dorland.

Larson insisted that she did not plagiarize and that Dorland’s kidney donation was just one source of inspiration among many others, including Larson’s own experiences with alcoholism and being a Chinese-American. In addition to that, The Kindest had gone through many revisions and Larson argued that the version submitted to the Boston Book Festival did not have enough similarities to Dorland’s Facebook letter to be a plagiarized version of it. Larson and her lawyers also maintained that Dorland’s constant attempts to accuse Larson of plagiarism, including showing up at Larson’s panels and conferences, constituted harassment. In Larson’s view, Dorland’s accusations were a white author’s attempt to co-opt the success of a Chinese-American author.

Dorland and Larson’s conflict exemplifies the saying “art imitates life.” However, the conflict also leads to questions of the extent to which art ought to imitate life.

–Discussion Questions–

Who is in the wrong here, Dorland or Lawson? Why?

Although writers may take inspiration from many different sources, including the lives of their friends, when, if ever, would it be unethical to take inspiration from real life? What obligations, if any, do writers have towards the source of their inspiration when constructing, and perhaps profiting off of, a narrative based on their “muses’” lives?