Vote Knope

Most writers, unless they’re lucky enough to have an ideal place in which to work, make do with the best space available. For Colum McCann’s father, the shed in his backyard, which “always smelled damp inside, as if the rain rose up out of the carpet,” sufficed for the fiction he wrote after coming home from work. At Page-Turner, the National Book Award winner and Year in Reading alum remembers his father’s retreat.

His music isn’t letting him get what he wants, so Morrissey is turning to writing instead. After his autobiography, Morrissey, was more successful than any of his records, the musician is writing a novel next.

Recommended Reading: Joseph Fasano’s  “Coda,” which is The Missouri Review’s poem of the week. “Now he is listening for beginning./Now he is lying/among that sinew,/asking, as a boy would, where his song goes.”