Photographer Kyle Cassidy chronicles science fiction writers (and editors) in their creative environments.

There is a powerful aura of creative energy that surrounds Michael Swanwick. I can tell you this with absolute certainty, because I’ve felt it.

Some time in late 2008 I got invited to a party at his house, mostly or entirely, I suspect, because he mistook me for someone else. While there I asked if I could see his Hugos, since I knew he had five of them. “Of course!” he said, jovially, and lead me up to his office. This I thought in stunned wonder as my eyes crept across the expanse of it, is a place of great significance and it needs to be seen. It was like I’d cracked open his skull and seen the gears of genius. The best way I can describe it is as a nest, made out of books, as intricate and well assembled as a Nevelson sculpture. I asked him if I could stop back and photograph it. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘but not before I clean it up.’ I begged him not to but he replied ‘You can’t stop me from doing it, nor will you be able to tell that I have.’

I spend a lot of time thinking about people’s environments – the places they build around themselves, the things they choose to live with. Is there a connection, I started to wonder if there was a connection between the places that writers work and their work itself.

Why not find out?

Check out some more of Cassidy’s author images at WHERE I WRITE.