The Real Life of the Writer

By

We are quite happy to view images of writers’ desks and read features on ‘Where I Write’. Very different would be to see ‘Where I Sleep’ or ‘Where I Park the Car’; ‘Where I store the extra loo roll’. Of course, it’s not as interesting . . . but it does mean we fail to comprehend the real stuff of the life of a writer and to see those people at the sides of writers’ lives, who are often also central to their existence.

Melville House turns the spotlight on several famous writers’ companions and the key roles they played in their writers’ lives and literary legacies.

Claire Burgess’s short fiction has appeared in Third Coast, Hunger Mountain, and PANK online, among others. Her stories have received special mentions in the Pushcart Prize and Best American anthologies, but haven’t actually made it into one yet. She’s a graduate of the Vanderbilt University MFA program, where she co-founded Nashville Review. She lives in Pittsburgh by way of the deep South and says things on Twitter @Clairabou_. More from this author →