In a shed in her backyard, an author makes space to create.

____

A Parisian loft, a cottage by the sea, a mountain yurt. Within each artist exists the imaginings of a space in which one’s wildest and most fantastic conceptions might germinate and bloom. In Maine, such places are not uncommon. E.B. White, for example, composed masterpieces like One Man’s Meat and Charlotte’s Web from a repurposed boathouse overlooking Blue Hill Bay in Brooklin.

Like White, fiction writer Joan Dempsey has transformed a utilitarian structure into a place where storylines may be convinced to gather themselves into works of literature. A pergola, wound with dormant vines that will burst into brilliant purple flowers in summer, frames the kitchen window of her New Gloucester home. Behind the gray-shingled homestead, raised wooden beds topped with a layer of hay nurture the spring garlic. Sunflower husks reach toward their namesake star, resilient despite the late autumn frost that fringes the grasses. A row of faded broccoli stalks— minus the discarded floret that Beatrice the terrier is now chewing—is lined up nearby.

Maggie the cat follows us past the garden to a small outbuilding, complete with porch and white rocking chair that beckons from beneath the evergreens. A sister pergola twined with grapevines arches gracefully over the porch. “My door is open to you,” the little dwelling seems to say. “Enter here, and create.”

Dempsey’s writing space, lovingly nicknamed “The Shed,” emerged from humble beginnings. Well-stocked bookshelves took the place of what was once a chicken coop, dusted with feathers and the leavings of squabbling poultry; a small woodstove squats in the corner where a lawnmower once rested.

“As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s going to be my space,’” says Dempsey, who moved north to Maine nine years ago after spending more than twenty years in Boston. “I designed the interior. The structure was in good shape. We had it renovated and now it’s full of books. I work like crazy, and I leave the door open so the animals can come in and out.”

Dempsey has been conscientiously sharing her corner of the planet with creatures both two- and four-footed for decades. She worked in the social justice and peace movement before transitioning to animal welfare. She spent ten years at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, primarily as a lobbyist and animal advocate. At 30, she took her first writers’ workshop at GrubStreet in Boston. “I knew in the first session of the workshop that this is what I wanted to do,” remembers Dempsey. “I sat down to do an exercise and this character just appeared to me. I really fell in love with the work.” She embarked upon the creation of what would become her first novel, while still holding down a full-time job. She also began a master’s degree in fine arts in creative writing and a graduate certificate for the teaching of creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Dempsey gestures toward a photo of her Antioch classmates, tacked above her desk in the shed. This photo shares the wood- paneled wall with James Baldwin, Alice Munro, and John Irving (whom she once heard speak in New Hampshire). Pictures of her family are perched in front of books by Paul Auster, George Eliot, and J.M Coetzee; several smooth beach stones and a crystal convene on the windowsill near the coatrack. “My whole life is in here, one way or another,” says Dempsey.

Dempsey’s wall adornments remind us that she is both a writer and a teacher. Upon the bulletin board, there are several neatly arranged rows of terms such as rhetoric and metaphor, along with a typed list entitled “The Best Times to Sell.” This fall Dempsey conducted an online class called “Revise Your Writing: Where to Begin” for 1,187 people. She also connects individually with students from around the world who seek her assistance with their writing projects.

“I love teaching because I learn things more deeply myself,” says Dempsey. “Teaching still really moves me because I can help other people have that great experience that I had of falling in love with the work. It’s just endlessly rewarding.”

Most days, Dempsey begins her teaching tasks at 6:30 a.m., relying upon her wood stove to ward off the seasonal chill. By this time, her partner, Bert Troughton, will be out walking their dogs, broccoli-eating Bea and Logan, an English short-haired pointer. Troughton is the senior vice president of strategy with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Dempsey maximizes her time in the shed, usually stopping at noon for an excursion to the Royal River Conservation Trust’s Pisgah Hill Preserve in New Gloucester with Troughton and the dogs. After lunch, she resumes her educational endeavors until 5 or 6 p.m. “When I’m here, I know that I won’t be interrupted, and I end up teaching and writing more efficiently and faster,” says Dempsey. “I work harder, I think, than I’ve ever worked, because I’m doing what I love.”

Dempsey dedicates Thursdays and Fridays to her own writing. She is in the process of researching her third book. “I can get caught up emotionally in what I am writing,” says Dempsey, whose most recently completed novel is about an art theft related to the Holocaust. “I tend to find a topic that’s of interest to me and then just go and read, and watch and listen to anything I can.”

Writing, for Dempsey, is made easier by having a space in which she can fully experience the story she is writing. “I find myself acting out the characters,” says Dempsey. “Alone in the shed, I try to evoke an emotion or I act out something physically that I am trying to describe. In my current novel there is a scene of this guy that gets beat up, and of course I have never been beat up, so I was throwing myself on the ground, seeing where I would hit first. If there is a character experiencing an emotion, I will sit at my desk much like an actor does and I try to physically conjure the emotion in myself so I can begin to feel it and observe how it happens. Am I getting goose bumps? Does my stomach really hurt?”

Dempsey believes that having her own space has furthered her development as an artist. “The psychological energy it takes to do the work is a lot. To minimize external distractions and have everything around me supporting my work is super important,” she says.

The best part of having the shed is that it enables her to live in a way that resonates with her completely. Even as she is creating new worlds with the fictional characters of her novels, she is able to have the real world conveniently nearby. Her garden waits patiently for the spring, tiny garlic shoots creeping tentatively through the crisp earth; Logan, Bea, Maggie, and Little Jack (the other cat) loll near the fireplace in the home she shares with Bert just beyond the pergola.

One look at Dempsey’s converted chicken house makes it hard not to envy the home she has built for the sentences she so loves to craft. But the shed itself reminds us that we each have creative spaces within ourselves, waiting to be discovered. “The door to your imagination is always open,” the tiny house seems to whisper. “Enter, and create.”

A Parisian loft, a cottage by the sea, a mountain yurt. Within each artist exists the imaginings of a space in which one’s wildest and most fantastic conceptions might germinate and bloom. In Maine, such places are not uncommon. E.B. White, for example, composed masterpieces like One Man’s Meat and Charlotte’s Web from a repurposed boathouse overlooking Blue Hill Bay in Brooklin.

Like White, fiction writer Joan Dempsey has transformed a utilitarian structure into a place where storylines may be convinced to gather themselves into works of literature. A pergola, wound with dormant vines that will burst into brilliant purple flowers in summer, frames the kitchen window of her New Gloucester home. Behind the gray-shingled homestead, raised wooden beds topped with a layer of hay nurture the spring garlic. Sunflower husks reach toward their namesake star, resilient despite the late autumn frost that fringes the grasses. A row of faded broccoli stalks— minus the discarded floret that Beatrice the terrier is now chewing—is lined up nearby.

Maggie the cat follows us past the garden to a small outbuilding, complete with porch and white rocking chair that beckons from beneath the evergreens. A sister pergola twined with grapevines arches gracefully over the porch. “My door is open to you,” the little dwelling seems to say. “Enter here, and create.”

Dempsey’s writing space, lovingly nicknamed “The Shed,” emerged from humble beginnings. Well-stocked bookshelves took the place of what was once a chicken coop, dusted with feathers and the leavings of squabbling poultry; a small woodstove squats in the corner where a lawnmower once rested.

“As soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘That’s going to be my space,’” says Dempsey, who moved north to Maine nine years ago after spending more than twenty years in Boston. “I designed the interior. The structure was in good shape. We had it renovated and now it’s full of books. I work like crazy, and I leave the door open so the animals can come in and out.”

Dempsey has been conscientiously sharing her corner of the planet with creatures both two- and four-footed for decades. She worked in the social justice and peace movement before transitioning to animal welfare. She spent ten years at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, primarily as a lobbyist and animal advocate. At 30, she took her first writers’ workshop at GrubStreet in Boston. “I knew in the first session of the workshop that this is what I wanted to do,” remembers Dempsey. “I sat down to do an exercise and this character just appeared to me. I really fell in love with the work.” She embarked upon the creation of what would become her first novel, while still holding down a full-time job. She also began a master’s degree in fine arts in creative writing and a graduate certificate for the teaching of creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.

Dempsey gestures toward a photo of her Antioch classmates, tacked above her desk in the shed. This photo shares the wood- paneled wall with James Baldwin, Alice Munro, and John Irving (whom she once heard speak in New Hampshire). Pictures of her family are perched in front of books by Paul Auster, George Eliot, and J.M Coetzee; several smooth beach stones and a crystal convene on the windowsill near the coatrack. “My whole life is in here, one way or another,” says Dempsey.

Dempsey’s wall adornments remind us that she is both a writer and a teacher. Upon the bulletin board, there are several neatly arranged rows of terms such as rhetoric and metaphor, along with a typed list entitled “The Best Times to Sell.” This fall Dempsey conducted an online class called “Revise Your Writing: Where to Begin” for 1,187 people. She also connects individually with students from around the world who seek her assistance with their writing projects.

“I love teaching because I learn things more deeply myself,” says Dempsey. “Teaching still really moves me because I can help other people have that great experience that I had of falling in love with the work. It’s just endlessly rewarding.”

Most days, Dempsey begins her teaching tasks at 6:30 a.m., relying upon her wood stove to ward off the seasonal chill. By this time, her partner, Bert Troughton, will be out walking their dogs, broccoli-eating Bea and Logan, an English short-haired pointer. Troughton is the senior vice president of strategy with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Dempsey maximizes her time in the shed, usually stopping at noon for an excursion to the Royal River Conservation Trust’s Pisgah Hill Preserve in New Gloucester with Troughton and the dogs. After lunch, she resumes her educational endeavors until 5 or 6 p.m. “When I’m here, I know that I won’t be interrupted, and I end up teaching and writing more efficiently and faster,” says Dempsey. “I work harder, I think, than I’ve ever worked, because I’m doing what I love.”

Dempsey dedicates Thursdays and Fridays to her own writing. She is in the process of researching her third book. “I can get caught up emotionally in what I am writing,” says Dempsey, whose most recently completed novel is about an art theft related to the Holocaust. “I tend to find a topic that’s of interest to me and then just go and read, and watch and listen to anything I can.”

Writing, for Dempsey, is made easier by having a space in which she can fully experience the story she is writing. “I find myself acting out the characters,” says Dempsey. “Alone in the shed, I try to evoke an emotion or I act out something physically that I am trying to describe. In my current novel there is a scene of this guy that gets beat up, and of course I have never been beat up, so I was throwing myself on the ground, seeing where I would hit first. If there is a character experiencing an emotion, I will sit at my desk much like an actor does and I try to physically conjure the emotion in myself so I can begin to feel it and observe how it happens. Am I getting goose bumps? Does my stomach really hurt?”

Dempsey believes that having her own space has furthered her development as an artist. “The psychological energy it takes to do the work is a lot. To minimize external distractions and have everything around me supporting my work is super important,” she says.

The best part of having the shed is that it enables her to live in a way that resonates with her completely. Even as she is creating new worlds with the fictional characters of her novels, she is able to have the real world conveniently nearby. Her garden waits patiently for the spring, tiny garlic shoots creeping tentatively through the crisp earth; Logan, Bea, Maggie, and Little Jack (the other cat) loll near the fireplace in the home she shares with Bert just beyond the pergola.

One look at Dempsey’s converted chicken house makes it hard not to envy the home she has built for the sentences she so loves to craft. But the shed itself reminds us that we each have creative spaces within ourselves, waiting to be discovered. “The door to your imagination is always open,” the tiny house seems to whisper. “Enter, and create.”