Where Writers Write: Bren McClain

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. 

photo by Suzanne DeBose

This is Bren McClain. 

She was born and raised in Anderson, South Carolina, on a beef cattle and grain farm. She has a degree in English from Furman University; is an experienced media relations, radio, and television news professional; and currently works as a communications confidence coach. She is a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and the recipient of the 2005 Fiction Fellowship by the South Carolina Arts Commission. An excerpt from One Good Mama Bone was named a 2012 finalist for the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Award for a Novel-in-Progress. This is McClain’s first novel.

Where Bren McClain Writes

You’ll need to bow your head, after you open the door and step into my writing space. Otherwise, unless you’re only four feet tall, you’ll hit your head.  I write in a stairwell. Let me show it to you. 

“Feed the kitties” is actually what I write about. I call it the loading up of children with parents’ undone, unfulfilled “stuff.”

I like that I have to bow to enter my space. It puts me in the mood of subservience to the work. It reminds me that I know nothing, so I can present myself to find out.