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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

A sense of place

Writers reflect on a place that shaped their thinking

14 September 2019

  • One of the two canals that runs through the village of Chak 2/4-L in Punjab, Pakistan.

    My nameless village, now lost in time

    Mohammed Hanif
    My nameless village, now lost in time

6 September 2019

  • Elis James

    My teen years in Carmarthen were the perfect upbringing for comedy

    Elis James
    My standup act won £150 – and made me realise how funny life in a Welsh town can be, says comedian Elis James

4 September 2019

  • Roker Pier, Sunderland

    I left Sunderland at 18 – but was compelled to write about its precarious invincibility

    Jessica Andrews
    I had a sick feeling that the stories of the working-class people I loved were slipping away, says the author Jessica Andrews

2 September 2019

  • Kerry Hudson

    Life began for me as a queer teenager amid the happy excesses of Great Yarmouth

    Kerry Hudson
    It was where I came to understand the power and burden of my sexuality – and the place I revisited in all three of my books, says author Kerry Hudson

30 August 2019

  • Petrovac on the Adriatic coast in Montenegro

    Yugoslavia is gone, renamed and redrawn, but my family's history lives on within me

    Olivia Sudjic
    A trip to Sarajevo brought my family’s history home, says the author Olivia Sudjic

29 August 2019

  • Lynsey Hanley

    My children are teaching me to love the housing estate I fled

    Lynsey Hanley
    When I left Chelmsley Wood, on the edge of Birmingham, it felt like an escape. Now I see it differently, says the author Lynsey Hanley

26 August 2019

  • Elif Shafak

    As a lost child in Turkey I found refuge on an imaginary mountain

    Elif Shafak
    When I felt misplaced in my new world, the legends of Mount Qaf gave me a place of endless possibilities and uncensored words, says novelist Elif Shafak

22 August 2019

  • James Gulliver Hancock’s drawing of his aunt’s house

    My fascination with drawing cities began with the contours of a London street

    James Gulliver Hancock
    Landing at Heathrow airport from Sydney, a world full of different buildings opened up, says illustrator James Gulliver Hancock

19 August 2019

  • Press Works<br>circa 1950: Rebuilding work going on inside the printing hall at the Daily Express building, London. (Photo by Express/Express/Getty Images)

    My dad’s print works wasn’t just a business – it was an ink-spattered dream factory

    Emma Jane Unsworth
    He built it from scratch, and then it built him. Its hissing machines provided me with endless childhood adventures, says author Emma Jane Unsworth

15 August 2019

  • Reykjavik aerial view

    In Reykjavik I found I couldn’t write. But then I started to notice small things

    Sarah Moss
    By December, with only three official hours of daylight, I had learned to see modulations of light unnoticeable further south, says the novelist Sarah Moss

12 August 2019

  • A storm in the Mediterranean off Tel Aviv, Israel

    A rock, the sea and a battle for meaning

    Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
    Near Tel Aviv beach in 1939, an almost mythical struggle took place between a desperate refugee and his saviour, says Israeli novelist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

9 August 2019

  • Chibundu Onuzo

    Barbados didn’t feel like black man country – till I saw boys walking freely

    Chibundu Onuzo
    There were times it seemed I was not quite welcome. And yet it was beautiful to be there, says the Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo

5 August 2019

  • Kit de Waal

    Nostalgia is bollocks: but in 1970s Moseley, I never felt like an outsider

    Kit de Waal
    If you’re mixed-race it can be difficult to feel at home. But my Birmingham suburb was genuinely multicultural, says author Kit de Waal
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