The world is richer for its artists, not the least of which are the writers. In every country, indeed in every nook and cranny of Planet Earth, you’ll find storytellers, word spinners and scene makers. For many writers, there are places on the planet that will forever be associated with them. The following list offers you 10 writers with whom place has a connection — whether they wrote in that place, or wrote about that place — the connection is clear.
As with all our 10 on the 10th lists, this one is not complete by any means. But it is, we hope, an interesting list.
1 Havana, Cuba — ERNEST HEMINGWAY; The Nobel Prize winning author wrote seven books during the 30+ years he lived in Cuba. Among them: The Old Man and the Sea; A Moveable Feast; Islands in the Stream. Ten miles east of Havana, his island home, Finca Vigía (Lookout Farm/House), is now a museum and a place to imagine his inspiration.
2 Huron County, Ontario — ALICE MUNRO; Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Munro’s short stories are most often grounded in Huron County, Ontario, Canada. The fall is a lovely time to drive through Huron County and visit Wingham where her childhood home is still standing. Dozens of small towns are scattered throughout the rich farmland and it is the ordinary lives of those ordinary people Munro writes about in the most extraordinary way.
3 London, England — CHARLES DICKENS. Take a literary pub crawl through London Town with Dickens (as portrayed by an actor/tour guide) and glean inspiration and literary tibits. Tourists are invited to visit the public houses and taverns frequented by great writers. They promise you’ll meet Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, T.S. Eliot and others. And support new London writers! (We really liked that last bit.)
4 North Bay, Ontario — GILES BLUNT. Thinly disguised as Algonquin Bay, the detectives in Blunt’s wildly successful crime novels travel streets with familiar names for anyone who knows North Bay. His Detective Cardinal series of books and now a 3-season television series is set (and mostly filmed) in the city perched on the shores of Lake Nipissing, 2 hours north of Algonquin Park. Blunt’s characters are believable and the dynamic between Detective John Cardinal and Detective Lise Delorme adds spice to the rising tension in each mystery. Blunt, also a screenwriter and poet, was born in Windsor, Ontario and raised in North Bay. Lucky for readers, even after he moved away, he recognized how ideal it was for setting a murder mystery there.
5 Georgia, USA — FLANNERY O’CONNOR; The childhood home of O’Connor is in Savannah, the heart of which boasts some of the finest restored urban antebellum mansions. The South is the heart of O’Connor’s stories and she is unflinching in her tales of what some called “Southern Gothic” and even, “grotesque.” O’Connor said: “anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” She lived out the last 12 years of her too-short life in Milledgeville, Georgia.
6 Trinidad — RABINDRANATH MAHARAJ; Born and raised in George Village, Tableland, Maharaj came to Canada because he wanted to attend a masters program in creative writing. But he found that the distance from Trinidad gave him a new perspective with which to write his novels and short stories. His award-winning novel, The Amazing Absorbing Boy, captured the view of Canadian life through the eyes of an immigrant Trinidadian teenager. So while some of Maharaj’s stories and novels are set in the lush tropics of Trinidad, beautifully described so that readers will want to visit, the island flavours even his books set in Canada.
7 Montreal, Quebec — MORDECAI RICHLER with a dash of LEONARD COHEN; Montreal is a city of creatives. Artists, poets and novelists have made this cosmopolitan city their own. Chief among them, Mordecai Richler, one of Canada’s best known writers who has left a legacy of literature. Like the vivid energy of his hometown, Richler was never a background player and spoke his mind freely. That same energy was found in his characters and storylines. His award-winning novels have been made into films — The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Barney’s Version — and Richler’s books remain in bookstores today. In 2015, Richler was posthumously made a “citizen of honour” in the city of Montreal and a library in the neighbourhood he portrayed in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, was given his name.
8 Ameliasburgh, Prince Edward County, Ontario. AL PURDY; In 1957, poet Al Purdy with his wife and father-in-law constructed the now famous A-frame.(Al tells the story in Reaching for the Beaufort Sea.). There he wrote poems about the area published as Poems for All the Annettes . The following year The Cariboo Horses won the first of Al’s Governor General’s Awards. Even while the A-frame was being built, it became a meeting place—for poets, for poetry lovers, for those aspiring to be poets. The list of people who travelled to the A-frame reads like a who’s who of Canadian letters—Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje; Earle Birney, George Bowering, Margaret Laurence, Jack McClelland, …. The legacy continues through the A-Frame Residency Program.
9 Lakefield, Ontario — MARGARET LAURENCE; One of Canada’s finest writers, Laurence’s novels, short stories and essays were framed by the many places she called home. Born and raised in, a small town well west of Winnipeg, Laurence set her books in Western Canada, Somaliland and Nigeria, Africa. In 1973, she settled permanently in small town Lakefield in the Peterborough/Kawartha Region. On the shores of the Otonobee River, she crafted scenes for her final and brilliant novel The Diviners. The town of Lakefield honours Laurence every July (her birthday month) with a literary festival.
10 Neepawa, Manitoba. MARGARET LAURENCE Yes. That’s two places for one writer and why not? Laurence’s childhood home in Neepawa is a museum dedicated to her and her writing. Purchased the year before her death, Margaret Laurence House hosts writers’ workshops and book launches. As an inspiring mentor to several young writers, Margaret would surely be pleased to know she continues to encourage writers to explore their craft.