A view of Rome, a pristine computer screen, a photograph of Basquiat, an I.B.M. 196c typewriter, the ghost of another author. For these writers — each of whom releases a new book this fall — all they need to inspire is within these walls.

JONATHAN LETHEM





Lethem’s “Dissident Gardens” (Doubleday) tells the epic family saga of three generations of radical lefties in New York City.

I’ve written portions of six or seven books in this study, but it doesn’t really belong to me. The alcove in which the desk is set, the field and tree line through the windows, the surrounding acres, all of these are borrowed from another writer, named Esther Wood, whose grandfather built this farmhouse. She lived and wrote in this house for many years, and then for a long time after she’d lost her eyesight she went on living here, until she, at age 97, died in the bedroom upstairs, as had her father and grandfather, in all likelihood. Her books have titles like “Deep Roots: A Maine Legacy” and “Saltwater Seasons.” For decades a columnist for The Ellsworth American, Wood was a descendant of this town’s 18th-century founders, and the local historian; really, a living emblem of the town’s relationship to its own history, which remains fierce. In our neighborhood Wood is a more famous writer than I could ever possibly be. I’ve long since learned that if I want a plumber or electrician to visit the place, or simply in explaining where I live to someone local, it’s best to cut to the chase and say “Esther Wood’s house.”

We’ve altered the house as little as possible. I commissioned the built-in bookshelves, which were carpentered to keep to the look of the molding; the room seemed to have been waiting for them. While sitting here writing my mostly urban books I’ve watched deer, fox and bobcats cross our field, which must be some sort of forest freeway. I always figure the creatures are auditioning for a cameo in Esther Wood’s latest book or column. They’ve got the wrong writer.

JULIAN BARNES





Barnes paints a portrait of grief five years after the death of his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, in “Levels of Life” (Knopf).

I have worked in this room for 30 years. It is on the first floor, overlooking the tops of two prunus trees, which flower before they leaf, so that in a lucky year there can be both snow and pink blossoms on bare branches. The room itself has always been painted the same color, a bright, almost Chinese, yellow, giving the effect of sunlight even on the darkest day. I began working here on a small desk with a table set at right angles to it; then I had a desk built to cover the same floor plan but with the triangular hole filled in; later, I had it expanded to take a computer and more drawers, so that it is now almost horseshoe in shape. My old (and late) friend the novelist Brian Moore once spent a fortnight working here, and remarked afterwards that it made him feel like a TV newscaster: he kept expecting, when he turned, to see a female colleague at his elbow waiting to take up the next news story. I use the computer for e-mail and shopping; the I.B.M. 196c — 30 years old itself — for writing (or rather, second drafting: nowadays I generally first draft by hand). It is getting increasingly difficult to find ribbons and lift-off tape, but I shall use the machine until it drops. It hums quietly, as if urging me on — whereas the computer is inert, silent, indifferent. The room is usually very untidy: like many writers, I aspire to be a clean-desk person, but admit the daily reality is very dirty. So I have to walk carefully as I enter my study; but am always happy to be here.

JHUMPA LAHIRI





In “The Lowland” (Knopf), Lahiri offers a sweeping and poignant tale of two brothers separated by geography and ideology.

In spite of the chandelier the room feels quite plain. It’s brightest in the mornings, when I tend to write. The desk belonged to the cardiologist of a former pope. The stones and shells along the windowsill are from Puglia. Two of the postcards are images of female figures from Mycenae. The third is a portion of a fresco by an unknown artist in the Villa Farnesina, in Rome. It depicts a balcony overlooking a city. An alternate version of what I see.

I sit at the desk to type. Otherwise I sit on the sofa, to write by hand or read. When I read and write in Italian various items surround me: dictionaries, a pen, notebooks in which I jot down unfamiliar words and constructions.

The desk faces the Alban Hills, the Apennines. The terrace, just beyond the doors, gives onto a sweep of time and space, from the Forum and the Palatine all the way to EUR, a neighborhood that Mussolini conceived. I see the Gasometro in Ostiense, the crooked ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, Jesus and the saints on the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano.

When we were shown the apartment, the room was used for dining. But I knew right away that I wanted to work here. On occasion, in the afternoons, when the sun begins to set, I move out onto the terrace, where there is a bench and a small plaque etched with a line from Dante, to read over some pages. But I need to be inside the room to write.

For many years I had a map of ancient Rome hanging in assorted apartments in Boston, where I wrote most of the stories in my first book. This was nearly 20 years ago, when I’d only read and heard about Italy, before I’d ever come to Rome. Now I live here, with the city spread before me. It still feels unreal. When I’m working, I’m more aware of the sky than of the city. I look at clouds, at seagulls. It’s almost like being at sea.

EDWIDGE DANTICAT





Danticat’s “Claire of the Sea Light” (Knopf) digs deep into the intertwining lives of the residents of a small town where a young girl goes missing.

I like looking at faces while I work. Not actual faces, but paintings and photographs. I keep a pile of pictures, intriguing faces torn from newspaper or magazine pages, from which I might borrow distinctive features and gestures for my characters.

The paintings and prints around my desk are mostly gifts from friends and sometimes total strangers. I live between Miami’s Design District and Little Haiti neighborhoods, which means there are always amazing things to look at around me.

I was sitting in a neighborhood deli once having lunch with my daughters and trying to do a bit of work at the same time. Sitting next to us was Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammad Ali’s former physician and a well-known artist. At the end of the meal, he handed me a drawing that he had just dashed off on a napkin. Once when I went to visit my friend Edouard Duval Carrié in his Little Haiti studio with my oldest daughter, he took a picture of us and later enlarged it and put it in one of his signature frames. I like to keep those things nearby because they remind me of the indispensable generosity of my immediate and larger artist community.

However, the picture that has been with me the longest is a photograph of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which I’ve had since moving into my first solo apartment in my mid-20s. A friend who knew how much I love Basquiat gave me that picture, and fearing that writer-type notoriety might go to my head, wrote on the card that accompanied it, “Don’t ever believe your own hype.” I’ve had that picture on all my desks, at eye level, ever since.

Sometimes when I’m stuck and can’t write, I just sit there and stare at Basquiat. Or I sit under my desk and stare into space. Either way, I know that when I’m ready to get back to work, there will be all these faces there to greet me, silent witnesses to my days of both agony and joy.

RICHARD DAWKINS





In “An Appetite for Wonder” (Ecco), Dawkins gives readers insight into his own evolution as a man and a thinker.

Well, I don’t write only here. My untidy habits drive me to follow the slash-and-burn (or Mad Hatter) principle. Work on a virgin table until the mess becomes unbearable, then move on to a clean table in a clean room — or, on a beautiful summer day like this, one of the five tables dotted around the garden. Trash that table and move on again. Actually, in the case of the massive 8-foot-square, 6-inch-thick, rough-hewn stone table (Purbeck Jurassic limestone), “dotted” is hardly the word.

But there’s more to be said about the mess. There’s a weird sense in which I relish the contrast between the paper compost heap and the order and clarity of what’s inside the laptop computer lurching aslant it. I’m pretty obsessive and a perfectionist about what I write. Each page is read over, several dozens of times, and it changes every time, for the better I hope, by a sort of winnowing process that resembles natural selection — Darwinnowing I suppose we could call it. I find it hard to believe how writers managed in precomputer days. Only my first book, “The Selfish Gene,” was written on a typewriter and every page was a phantasmagoria of crossings out and Scotch-taped inserts. When eventually a clean copy came back from the professional typist, it was as if the sun had come out. The contrast between the Scotch-taped mess and the elegant typescript now comes to mind when I compare the deep litter on my desk to the permanently pristine page on the computer screen.

I was actually writing this very piece at the Jurassic table in the garden when the New York Times photographers arrived. But they obstinately refused to take their camera outside, preferring the chaos of my room.

JESMYN WARD