{"id":42749,"date":"2025-11-17T19:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/42749\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T19:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:51:08","slug":"the-novelists-are-fighting-at-the-center-for-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/42749\/","title":{"rendered":"The Novelists Are Fighting at the Center for Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Photo-Illustration: curbed; Photos: Getty\n <\/p>\n

Around four on a recent Thursday afternoon, the second floor of the Center for Fiction buzzed with a near-silent hum of productivity. Light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows as writers hunched over their laptops. A giant mural of Toni Morrison smiled in the stairwell. A lost-and-found table bore more forgotten water bottles than an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. But all was not well at the literary nonprofit: Sometimes, especially on weekday mornings, there aren\u2019t enough desks. \u201cEverybody is complaining,\u201d says a current member, a novelist. And there was more trouble on the horizon: \u201cIt\u2019s going to get worse when it\u2019s too cold to use the outdoor terrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally known as the Mercantile Library, the Center was founded in 1820, decades before the city\u2019s public-library system, backed by the businessmen of Manhattan\u2019s growing merchant class who wanted to keep their employees \u201caway from the rumshop and the billiard room<\/a>.\u201d Membership has two tiers: General members pay $180 a year for access to several bright, airy, bookshelf-lined rooms on the second floor of the BKSK-designed<\/a> space. But for $250 a month, 100 or so Writers Studio members can secure access to a separate, even brighter and airier space with individual desks. (This is significantly more expensive than, say, bringing a laptop to a coffee shop but significantly cheaper than the WeWork on Dean Street, which is comparatively charmless and where one might have to share a kitchen with unsavory AI-start-up types.) All desks and table space exist on a first-come, first-served basis, which, when they\u2019re all full, has led to about as much aggression as the average writer can muster \u2014\u00a0piercing glares, raised eyebrows, and uncharitable speculation: \u201cA lot of whispering about who\u2019s really a writer and who\u2019s just a \u2018creative\u2019 doing Zoom calls,\u201d says a former member who left the Center over the apparent overcrowding.<\/p>\n

A lot of whispering indeed. \u201cThere were certain people I suspected were lawyers or businesspeople just doing an office job,\u201d says Erica Peplin, who wrote and edited most of her novel<\/a> over the course of three years there before letting her membership lapse in the spring. But therein lies another tension at the Center: Isn\u2019t not-writing a sacred part of being a writer? Well, yes. \u201cI think about all the times I\u2019ve gone there with the intention of writing and just ended up going online,\u201d says Peplin. James Yeh, a longtime associate of the Center who began teaching there this year, also admits to \u201cdesecrating\u201d the space sometimes. (He isn\u2019t above rotely checking his email.) But the shame he feels afterward is instructive, perhaps even motivating: \u201cIt\u2019s nice to have a space that feels desecrated by those things,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cI\u2019m there to aspire to something higher.\u201d All the same, space is tight, Yeh admits. \u201cI\u2019m glad it\u2019s popular. I\u2019m glad people are using it,\u201d he tells me. \u201cBut I wouldn\u2019t want it to become too much more popular.\u201d<\/p>\n

To secure a desk, savvy members have started to time their visits to off hours. \u201cFriday at 4:30 p.m. is a dream,\u201d says Amy Hubbard, a general member. \u201cThen, it\u2019s a perfect space to get writing done.\u201d Still, given the expense and the potential hassle, why pay? \u201cThe space really transcends the physical,\u201d says Hubbard. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about having a desk to work on your novel but also incidental encounters with other writers, who sometimes you need to talk you off the ledge.\u201d Although, sometimes, those incidental encounters become something else: An afternoon tea organized by the Center \u2014\u00a0advertised as an opportunity for members to talk about \u201cany process, editorial, literary and\/or professional concerns with other writers\u201d \u2014\u00a0turned into a gripe session about the Wi-Fi. (As it turned out, someone had been using the internet to download movies.)<\/p>\n

Per the Center, the desk shortage is a nice-enough problem to have for a smallish nonprofit \u2014 a reflection of \u201cour expanding community of readers and writers and the importance of creative space and connection.\u201d That said, it has heard its members\u2019 cries: \u201cWe are thrilled by the enthusiasm and aim to continually engage with our members to improve their experience as we grow.\u201d (Also: The Center has reconfigured the Wi-Fi.) The first-come, first-served system that has caused the current friction is itself the result of a reform effort: Previously, members of the Writers Studio could book desk time in advance, which seems like a good idea except that people frequently didn\u2019t show up for their appointed time, or showed up late, leaving desk space open during the Studio\u2019s busiest hours and frustrating everyone. The Center has also opened overflow space elsewhere on the second floor for Writers Studio members in the morning, before the hoi polloi of the general membership arrive.<\/p>\n

On the afternoon I visited, the communal tables were mostly full, writers sitting shoulder to shoulder. There were plenty of desks available in the more secluded Writers Studio, but still, the issue loomed: \u201cIs the Writers Studio full?\u201d read a piece of paper attached to a clipboard by the door. \u201cWe\u2019re asking you to let us know here whenever you can\u2019t find a desk.\u201d According to this piece of paper, at least, the Writers Studio was completely full no less than seven times in one three-week span. And yet members press on \u2014\u00a0to write and to gripe. \u201cIt\u2019s like working out,\u201d the novelist tells me. \u201cIf I couldn\u2019t get on the elliptical at Chelsea Piers, I would be pissy about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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