This book made me want a beautiful desk in a room overlooking the countryside, surrounded by nature, books, and old photographs; a quiet space to read and write in peaceful solitude. But it also challenged that idea. It explores the evolving concept of the writing room, and what it even means to be a writer today. Does writing have to be done alone? In a set place? Or can it happen anywhere, woven into daily life?

I found this really readable, interesting and a page turner. It delves into the fascination we have with writers and where they write. What actually makes someone a writer? And if you are one, can you ever really stop being one, even when you're on holiday, running errands, or caught up in everyday life?

I especially enjoyed the reflections on writers who resist the spotlight. Do we need to know who the writer is if they don’t want to be known? Isn’t the writing enough, without the marketing of a person as well?

The historical sections were a highlight for me, especially the tension between domestic life and creative work for women in the past. The book blends the personal with the historical beautifully, and shows how writing habits, note-taking, and creative spaces have shifted in modern life.

Thoroughly researched, thoughtful, and full of detail. I’m very grateful to have received an ARC from NetGalley. This is my honest review, and I’m really glad I had the chance to read it.

Literary, sharp, and utterly addictive ✒️📚. The Writer’s Room offers an insider glimpse into the world of words, ambition, and hidden rivalries. Katie da Cunha Lewin promises complex characters, clever observations, and plenty of drama behind the scenes. A must-read for fans of books about books, creativity, and the messy world of writers.

This book feels like a history journal about writer’s, yet also like a literary reportage.
The author researched how other author’s wrote, or where their writing took place.
She refers to a special kind of solitude on which the labor of writing is based. According to her, there’s a relationship between what happens in the writer’s room and the world the writer attempts to comprehend. A strange dance between public and private aspects of life.
The writer’s room entails a space that give a true sense of a writer’s creative life. Writers seem to have unique powers of looking, a capability to record what they see. So this room is a protective bubble, keeping the writer in and the rest of the world out.
The author asks herself “how many other versions are there of the writer, except the one she imagines?”

I found the journey behind the doors of writers from the past interesting and compelling.

Ostensibly about the spaces writers inhabit, this book is actually more about how we think about writers, the act of writing and creativity. Specifically, da Cunha Lewin takes issues with the cultural image of the solitary writer labouring away in silence at their desk; the room they inhabit in our mind is free of distractions, free of commitments, precarity and all the things that make writing difficult. Curated spaces that preserve, say, Virginia Woolf’s writing desk at Monk’s House, buy into this image a little bit, and give visitors what they expect to say rather than the strict truth. Woolf used a writing board more than she used a desk. Through an exploration of the various spaces writers use to write – not all of them a singular room, or even a room at all – da Cunha Lewin points out how much more varied and peripatetic writing life is.

I loved the observations of how every-day, non-writing life shaped the writing space. She is clear about the barriers that limit access to the familiar idea of the writing room. Who can afford a home with that much space? Who has the time to sit and write for hours at a time? The spaces da Cunha Lewin explores are not always rooms, and not always even physical places. Cafés, buses, zoom calls. Mara Angelous rented hotel rooms and stripped them of any identifying features. But no writer really labours alone. At every turn, she reminds us that writing is an activity that is interwoven with life. There are people supporting artistic endeavours: people who turn writers’ homes in residencies, people who clean and tidy curated spaces, people who look after childcare and domestic responsibilities and people who just lend and ear.

It’s not a book of writing advice, but a book about valuing and protecting the act of writing, wherever it takes place.

Out in September from Elliot & Thompson. Thanks to them and Netgalley for the ARC.

This book was clearly written to me. I did not want this to finish, because it was so much to learn. I am a writer and a reader, have been since could do both. And I have never felt I read a non-fiction book describing the art of a writers room this well. I want the physical book in my home-library, I need it. Its the best book for ANY person who want a writing rooom. BRAVO!!!
Thank you so much to the publisher and NetGalley for my copy and letting me give my honest review.

The Writer's Room is about so much more than the spaces where writers work.

Katie da Cunha Lewin takes us on a thoughtful and reflective journey into the past of familiar writers such as Virginia Woolf and Maya Angelou, while beautifully weaving in her own journey with writing.

Her exploration of financial stability and on gender and racial divides as factors in the writing process was done with such care and self-awareness. Katie da Cunha Lewin takes what could have easily been a niche deep dive that excluded many people into one that is a unpretentious and quiet celebration of artists and creativity in its essence.

A beautiful read from start to finish — Katie da Cunha Lewin's prose is introspective and invites the reader to sit at the table and participate too.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Elliott & Thompson for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was a really fascinating read featuring a range of interesting writers. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on temporary spaces which I found to be the most original part of the book. I only wish there had been more photos interspersed throughout to illustrate the text.

A niche topic depending on who you ask, but this was so appealing to me. This was interesting even if only for its voyeuristic element. If you've ever written anything, whether academically, professionally, leisurely, you will find yourself in one of the writing spaces mentioned. Perhaps you write at the kitchen table, or on the bus, in a coffee shop, or the library.

Lewin's work is thoughtful and diverting. A nice non-fiction. One of the ones worth having a physical copy of!

A really interesting read. I loved learning about where famous writers wrote. A book to gift to other keen readers. I read it on kindle . Think it will be extra good in paperback . Recommend it very much.

A wonderful read!
Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

The Writer’s Room is structured around a curious topic: the writing spaces of writers.
Da Cunha Lewin did an amazing research and you can see her passion for the topic on each page.
Enjoyability and informativeness-wise, on a personal level, this was 3 stars.

The Writer's Room by Katie da Cunha Lewin is an interesting delve into the spaces that famous authors have written in and how that has informed their work.