His lawyer told the Globe newspaper that on July 15 2016 –

His lawyer told the Globe newspaper that on July 15, 2016 – in the midst of “his” initial tensions with Dorland – Larson asked the audio editor to change “his” story because there were some phrases in the text that I took from the actual letter. In reality, Larson was upset about the situation. When a Book Festival representative approached “him” about Dorland in June, Larson happily offered to edit The Kindest. I memorized the letter and wrote down phrases that seemed convincing, but I ended up creating a fictionalized letter to fit the character of Rose, who was writing for the festival. Ten days later, Larson responded that “she” was indeed working on a story about a woman who gets a kidney, inspired in part by the way my imagination ran wild after I learned of “her” tremendous gift. She was writing a script based not on Dorland, but on something else – themes that had always fascinated her. Now that “she” had read those intense emails from Larson – about that kidney donation story; “her” kidney donation? – Dorland wondered if everyone at GrubStreet was playing another game whose rules “she” didn’t understand. On July 21, 2015, Larson responded to Dorlands’ letter with a reassuring reply, “How are you, dear? Dorland responded with a brief description of “her” upcoming workshops and writing internships and asked as casually as possible: “I think you know I donated my kidney this summer. A month later, at the GrubStreet Muse conference in Boston, Dorland felt something had changed, not just with Larson, but with several prominent GrubStreet figures, old friends and mentors who were also members of Larson’s writing group, the Chunky Monkeys. There are pages and pages of printed texts and emails between Larson and “her” writer friends in which they rant about Dorland and ridicule everything about her-not only “her” claim to ownership, but the way “she” spoke publicly about “her” kidney donation. Dorland still wanted Larson to explicitly and publicly acknowledge that “her” words were in Larson’s story. On January 15, 2016 – the day before “she” told Dorland, “I treasure our relationship” – Larson wrote in an interview with Allison Murphy, “Man, I could have written pages and pages more about Dawn. And that’s what fiction writers know. The question of whether your story is related to Dorland, according to Larson, is not only completely inappropriate, but ridiculous. Larson accused Dorland of distorting the true meaning of the story – and making it personal, not about race and privilege. “I’m now watching Dawn Dorlands’ kidneys with frightening interest,” Whitney Scharer, author of GrubStreet and fellow Chunky Monkey, wrote to Larson in October 2015 – the day after Larson sent “his” first draft of ‘The Kindest’ to the group.