Gale Zoë Garnett reading in her apartment in Sweden
I fell in love with Visby, Gotland, Sweden in 2001. This medieval walled city on the Baltic Sea is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with beauty and extraordinary architecture protected.
The superb Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators accepted me for the first of five work stays. I travelled there when free time coincided with an available room. I was their first Canadian. I love Toronto. I've lived there most of my life. I love Visby. Now, I live there too.
If you love a place, you want to be there whenever possible. When I saw my live-work studio, I knew instantly that, if I could do it, I would live there. Collapsed an RRSP to do it.
I'm doing new work now, writing daily. Brain death kicks in at 3. So I go to the gym, shop for food or visit the splendid university library. In good weather, there are the botanical gardens and the beach. I also love cooking meals for Visby friends, or polyglot writer/translator colleagues in residence at Baltic Centre.
The first book I read in my studio was Neil Bissoondath's The Soul of All Great Designs, a startling and moving exploration of multiple identities in Toronto. The second was The Holder of the World by Bharati Mukherjee, which also explores South Asian identities (as well as native American) as they weave through centuries.
Writing is an enemy of reading, but poetry makes it through the writing walls. Currently, I'm reading the wonderful poetry of Tomas Tranströmer, in Swedish and English. And, in English, A Good Time Had By All, by Meaghan Strimas.
Gale Zoë Garnett's most recent novel is Savage Adoration. She is working on a play a play, a poetry collection and essays on the gay men in her life.