Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment shows how the creative process works

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece, Crime and Punishment , is hard for a novelist to make a double axe-murderer sympathetic, writes Andrea Skinner .

Skinner: Stories take us out of ourselves so that we can see ourselves and help us to explore our fears and past traumas from the safe distance of an imagined space.

Toronto Star published Andrea Skinner's account of years of childhood sexual abuse by her stepmother and stepmother.

Gerald Fremlin exposed himself to her until she was twelve .

Fremlin threatened to kill Skinner and commit suicide if the story got out.

The idea that children may be sexually precocious was accepted by all of the day ’s leading postmodern intellectuals.

In 1977 , Simone de Beauvoir , Jacques Derrida , Michel Foucault , Jean-Paul Sartre , and a host of other French luminaries signed a petition.

Alice Munro was accused of having an affair with her daughter's daughter.

She says Munro called her daughter a liar when she found out she was pregnant with twins.

The author died in May , but her daughter says she wants the story to be part of the record.