Steve Wasserman delivers a presentation, “A Writer’s Space,” at the 2024 Sierra Writers Conference.

In-person event at Nevada County Campus, Grass Valley, Room N-12. CLICK HERE to get a general admission ticket for all in-person events.

What do we mean when we say “a writer’s space”? Is such a space different than, say, any other citizen’s space? Is the space of a writer a physical place—the place where the writing is actually done, the den, the office, the hotel room, the bar or café, the bedroom, upon a desk or table or any available flat and stable surface? Or is the “writer’s space” an inner region of the mind? Or is it a psychological place deep within the recesses of the heart, a storehouse of emotions containing a jumble of neurological circuitry? Is it the place, whether physical or spiritual, where the writer tries to make sense of otherwise inchoate lives? In either case, is it a zone of safety that permits the writer to be vulnerable and daring and honest so as to find meaning and order in the service of story?

Steve is publisher of Heyday, a nonprofit independent press founded in Berkeley in 1974. He is past editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review and former publisher of Hill & Wang, an imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and editor at large for Yale University Press. He also worked as a literary agent representing, among others, the late Christopher Hitchens, film historian and critic David Thomson, and singer Linda Ronstadt.