Writer's Room @ the library .. a Place for Wordsmiths

excerpts from the cbc.com article: Toronto Reference Library adds dedicated room for writers (Jan 22, 2015)

Writers' Room at the Toronto Reference Library

'This will give writers wandering from coffee shop to coffee shop a place where they can be'- Robert Rotenberg, novelist and lawyer, on the Reference Library's new Writers' Room

Writers can apply to use the space for up to 3 months.  Outfitted with power plugs, free internet, access to the library for research and a place to keep all the books and materials they require, it is also quiet and free from life's distractions.

"Any writer, published or not, can apply to use the Reference Library's Writers' Room for a three-month period with an option to renew, depending on availability. Booking the room requires a library card and the room is only available during the Reference Library's opening hours."

Writers Will Need to Remember Freedom

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

-Ursula K. Le Guin

during her acceptance speech for winning the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the National Book Awards.

November 20, 2014