This is Write Here, a column where authors and literary luminaries tell us about the travels they took to find inspiration and create their latest books.
In this installment, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrew Sean Greer describes living in Venice while completing his latest novel Villa Coco. In it, a young post-graduate answers a help-wanted ad for someone to take inventory of the contents of a “modest country home.” Turns out it’s an aging and charismatic Italian villa belonging to an aging and charismatic Italian Baronessa. Though the book is largely set in Tuscany—and based on the author’s time spent at a Tuscan writers’ retreat hosted by the Santa Maddalena Foundation—Greer completed the book while in Venice, having moved there from Milan with his partner because “it seemed like a good place to write.” Below, he explains how Venice helped him finish his novel and the eye-opening experience of living and writing in a country not his own.
“In late 2024 I moved to Venice. It was getting unaffordable living in Milan, and because my partner is Italian and doesn’t yet have a green card for the United States, we had to find somewhere to live in Italy, which I suppose is a nice problem to have. I said, ‘I would like a medieval tower above the sea,’ and he rudely said, ‘No.’
Really, I wanted somewhere quiet with a good restaurant, a beautiful square, and a masterpiece of art in a church—something to inspire me but not distract me. So we spent about a year and a half trying different locations: We visited lakeside cities outside of Rome. We went to the south of Naples, along the coast. And finally, my partner said, ‘Why don’t we try Venice?’ He’s from near there and has friends who live in the lagoon. But it just didn’t occur to me that you could do that. It’s almost like saying, ‘I want to live in Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disney World.’
We arrived in Venice in November, the start of winter. It’s a very quiet season here, which was perfect because I was already deep into Villa Coco and I had to keep working. Friends told me how to get a pass to the library at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, this palazzo in the city’s Castello district. The library has rooms with desks, lamps looking out on a garden, and lots of other people also working, which is the best way to get yourself working too.
To get there from our apartment, I would take the long way around on a vaporetto—this beautiful trip along the Giudecca Canal that stops at the docks at San Marco–San Zaccaria. Doing that every day was a magical way to focus. In Venice, there’s just something interesting to look at all the time, especially right now with the Art Biennale going on. Living in a country not my own and working in a language not my own makes me alert to my surroundings. You need that state of mind in order to be able to create. On early morning walks along the Zattere, this waterfront promenade in the Dorsoduro district, I notice the crowds of runners and elderly ladies, the dog walkers and workers getting the trash boats ready, things I hadn’t seen before.
Prior to Italy, I lived and wrote in San Francisco for 30 years. Maybe it’s just what happens with time, but I wasn’t paying attention as much or I’d block out things. And Milan was not helpful to my writing. It was too similar to other business-y cities and, I think, didn’t have enough for me to take in visually when I walked. To be fair, I was there mostly during the Covid-19 pandemic so I could only walk around three blocks. I didn’t get anything out of it—and I don’t mean material. I mean this other thing where you’re really able to let your thoughts wander and imagine. In Venice, for example, I’d see a carved face on the side of a building and think of a metaphor, or make it something that a character in the book notices. Anything I see can become part of the story I’m writing.