Historian, cultural critic, and lecturer David Starkey recently interviewed Jana Zimmer on his “Creative Community” series. Their conversation covers their decade-long friendship, and how Zimmer’s life experience naturally led to a collage-filled memoir.

Starkey asks Zimmer about the process of writing Chocolates from Tangier, wondering if “the pieces [came] out chronologically,” to which Zimmer details her experience creating two solo exhibitions in Prague and Germany. She asserts these two exhibitions bookend her prose and allowed her to fill in the gaps of the intervening years, claiming “[she was] able to go back and see the roots of things in hindsight, many years later,” henceforth establishing a cohesive narrative.

Watch the full interview below.