David Guterson, author of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” is coming to Bainbridge Performing Arts for a special event in March and will take readers behind the scenes of the creation of his wartime novel.

BPA, which is showcasing a staged production of “Snow Falling on Cedars” next month, will welcome the writer for a special pre-show presentation at 1 p.m. Sunday, March 22.

Twenty years after the first publication of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” its author will reflect back on the influences, ideals and ambitions that led to its writing, and what the book means to him now.

It took Guterson five years to write “Snow Falling on Cedars,” in part because he was teaching full-time at Bainbridge High School, and in part because of the extensive research involved. Guterson delved deep into salmon fishing, strawberry farming and the Japanese American internment as he prepared his manuscript.

To describe the anti-Japanese hysteria that prevailed in the 1940s, he also steeped himself in hundreds of pages of oral histories compiled by internees and members of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community. And though the fictitious San Piedro Island of the book drifts at some distance from Bainbridge — on a real map of Puget Sound it would lie in the San Juan Islands — it is populated by some authentic Bainbridge characters.

The literary model for the book, however, was more remote. It was, in fact, modeled on Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the 1960 novel Guterson regularly assigned to his high school English classes.

Guterson, then 39, received the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for “Snow Falling on Cedars” — a remarkable achievement for a first novel.

Even more remarkable was the fact that it went on to be not only a critical but also a commercial success, with over 4 million copies sold, it has generated a Hollywood film, a stage play and countless high school student essays.

Ironically, it is his novel that is now showing up in high school curricula – where it hasn’t been banned, of course.

Reading “Snow Falling on Cedars” some 20 years later, Guterson said he encountered an unexpected mixture of emotions. He will share these, along with reflections on how the book was written, before a matinee performance of the play.

This free community presentation will be held at BPA (200 Madison Ave. North). The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience.

For more information, visit www.bainbridgeperformingarts.org.