Inspo

In my writing I like to use photography and images to help craft story locations and to inform how I imagine the characters. Here are some books that provided good location/aesthetic inspo. This list also includes a larger body of work across mediums that I was moved or inspired by, even if I am not taking conscious inspiration from it.

Art, History, and Photography:

Sabine Rewald, Rooms With A View: The Open Window in the 19th Century (2011)
Jeanne Minhinnick, At Home in Upper Canada (1970)
Kim Ondaatje, Small Churches of Canada (1981)
Joe Chowaniec, Abandoned Alberta (2020)
David Ross, Abandoned Train Stations: Rail Stations, Yards, Signal Boxes, and Track That the World Left Behind (2022)

Other articles:

Novels:

Daphne du Maurier My Cousin Rachel
Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All The Time
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects & Gone Girl
Mona Awad, All’s Well
Jo Baker, Longbourn
Iain Reid, Foe & I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Jojo Moyes, Me Before You
Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

Films:

Little Women (2019) – this is probably my favorite film ever
The Beguiled
Promising Young Woman
The Woman In Black
Last Night In Soho
Room
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
The Substance
West Side Story (2021)
Crimson Peak
Anything put out by Guillermo del Toro, Robert Eggers, Baz Luhrmann

Plays, Poetry, Music, & Other Media:

Mary Oliver’s poetry, especially her collection Devotions
Itamar Moses and David Yazbeck, Dead Outlaw
Peter Shaffer, Equus
Laura Wade, Posh
Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice
Anaïs Mitchell, Hadestown
Alice Birch, Anatomy of a Suicide
Roland Schimmelpfennig, Arabian Night
Writing about Alan Lomax’s collection of folk songs from the rural USA
Music: Florence + The Machine, Lana Del Rey, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Vaccines, Marianas Trench, David Yazbeck (Dead Outlaw, The Band’s Visit), Bandits on the Run, Lorde, Mitski, Dave Malloy, Ingrid Michaelson.