The Writer’s Room

What is it that so fascinates us about the places where writers live and create? 

Why does a remote cabin, ramshackle shed or library garret, strewn with papers and piled with books, so capture our imagination?

The rooms of certain writers are mythologised almost as much as the works themselves: the Brontës’ study in the parsonage; Virginia Woolf’s garden room; Sigmund Freud’s study, with its famous couch. They are preserved in writers’ houses or recreated in museums, pictured and described in newspaper columns and on Instagram.

And yet writers, old and new, have worked in all kinds of places: in bedsits and boarding houses, at libraries, in bathrooms and while on the move. From Emily Dickinson’s hidden writing pocket to Lauren Elkin typing on her phone on the bus, Maya Angelou in hotel rooms and Ernest Hemingway in Parisian cafés to the founders of Women of Color Press around their kitchen tables, Katie da Cunha Lewin dismantles the familiar furniture of the writer’s room and opens it up.

The Writer’s Room takes us on a fascinating journey through the hidden worlds that shape the books we love. It is the perfect gift for the reader in your life.

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‘If you have ever felt preoccupied with visiting, snooping and uncovering the desks, shelves and habits of the greats, this book was made for you.’ Penny Wincer, author of Home Matters

 

‘A reverie – part pilgrimage, part personal reflection – on the places where writers find the right words.’ Clare Hunter, author of Threads of Life

Read a sample here