Where Writers Write: Bonnie ZoBell

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

 

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Bonnie ZoBell.

Bonnie's new linked collection from Press 53, What Happened Here, a novella and stories, is centered on the site PSA Flight 182 crashed into North Park, San Diego, in 1978, right next to where she now lives. Her fiction chapbook The Whack-Job Girls was published last year. She won an NEA, received an MFA from Columbia University, and teaches at San Diego Mesa College. 

Where Bonnie ZoBell Writes

We shared an office for many years then came to the realization that since our ninety-year-old garage isn't big enough to fit any vehicle larger than a model-T, one of us should move out here. I volunteered since all my gardening stuff is out here too. We had concrete poured over the rock and cement floor that hurt when you walked on it and looked, my sister said, like somebody had been murdered and buried under it. Friend and handyman Bernie and I found a great salvaged glass door and two windows at Habitat for Humanity. He put in drywall, and then there was the paint.

Hardly anybody but me and the occasional overnight guest were going to see these walls or anything else out here, so I could do whatever I wanted. The ceiling became blue like the sky.  The concrete floor is stained red and the rugs are green, ground.

Best of all, my Greenoffice or Offgreen (greenhouse and office) is now a combination of my two greatest loves—gardening and writing. When scribbling, I stare out the door, which I leave wide open most of the time, at my gardens. Ozzie and Xena, my two rescue Maltese; Beau and Lucy, my Maine Coon and tuxedo cats; and my husband Jim come out and visit.

The painting and my muse, Red Bird by Sandy Tweed, used on the cover of my book, sits over my desk and keeps an eye on things.

It feels colorful and mine, a place where my imagination can go wherever it likes.