sketchbook stories: the studio

every day, i write the book

Sugarbridge: my grandparents’ Pennsylvania farm. Chickens, horses. A pig called Albertina. And my grandfather’s studio in the fieldstone springhouse.

Here is where he created illustrations, in his signature shadow style, for books by the writers of the era—Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. Here is where he wrote poetry. Here is where wrote me a letter the summer I was born.

Writerly motivation for future me.

Eight years later, my own writing studio in the garage. My desk a splintery door on two sawhorses. The floorboards sloping downhill. A faint whiff of gasoline and lawn cuttings.

Portraits of inspiration, suspended in time.

illustration by my grandfather, Edward Shenton

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