Month: February 2016

Writing Spaces: Michelle Berry

This week we asked Michelle Berry, who contributed to our series “This Writer’s Life” in Issue 133, to show us her writing space. Here’s what she had to show us.

Michelle Berry Writing Spaces

 

“Here is my office… For now. I move furniture and rooms around a lot. Sometimes my office is at the front of the house, sometimes at the back. Once it was a rented space in downtown Peterborough; now it’s in the middle of the house, on the second floor. It’s a wonderfully bright room, which can be a problem as the sunlight reflects on my screen, with three big windows. I have covers of my books framed and hanging on the walls, a chair for my dog to lounge in, and a place to put my feet up under my desk. The three things I cannot write without are: time, quiet, and order.”

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Writing Spaces: Brent van Staalduinen

Thanks to the floodwater from a frigid, mid-February water-main break that came up in the garden next to our house and filled our basement with silt—and thus advancing the eventual plan to move me downstairs—I have a genuine, personalized writing space of my own. Plus bookshelves, a nice big desk, and a door I can close (moving through numerous revisions of my novel “Saints, Unexpected” —out in April 2015—has reinforced how necessary it is for me to escape into my own space to work). Additionally, as a constant reminder of why I do what I do, photographs of my wife and daughter have to surround me while I write. Finally, I’ve discovered that I need clutter. I always start projects with a clean surface and the best of intentions, but within days the stacks and piles and miscellaneous things come back, like cranky old friends you love to pieces but don’t necessarily tell anyone about.

Brent lives, works, and finds his voice in Hamilton. His novel Saints, Unexpected will be released in April from Invisible Publishing. Winner of the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Short Works Prize, his work is forthcoming in Prairie Fire and appears in The Prairie Journal, EVENT Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, The New Guard Literary Review, andAgnes and True. He holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and teaches writing at Redeemer University College.

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Writing Spaces: Jack Wang

This week we asked Jack Wang, author of “The Night of Broken Glass” in issue 133, to share his writing space with us. Here’s what he had to say.

Jack Wang writing space

“I’m currently on sabbatical and on fellowship at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. My furnished flat did not come with a desk, so I bought one at a secondhand shop—there are many in Norwich—for £10 and carried it home, mostly on my head, since I don’t have a car this year. Then I bought a chair for £3 at another secondhand shop. Basically, all I need is a desk, a chair, and my laptop, and I’ve learned not to take any for granted. One of Richard Bausch’s ten commandments of writing is ‘Train yourself to be able to work anywhere.’ I’m not good at that, but I have made a home out of this temporary, inexpensive, and spartan little space.”

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