Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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82 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.15 est in the morning. Pot of coffee on, several hours till work, the barking dog calmed after running wild in the yard. This is when novelist Kirby Gann writes. In the quiet, absolute. "I can be alone in the house, and I'll put in earplugs or listen to headphones with pink noise," the Louisville native says. He says the pink noise sounds like standing under a waterfall. Wooooosh. "It helps blot out the real world," he says. Harder for him to write at night, brain dead after a long day of reading manuscripts as managing editor at Sarabande Books, or after grading student Inside the Louisville author's home offce. Kirby Gann By Arielle Christian Photos by Aaron Kingsbury B papers (Gann teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Spalding University). Ideally, he'll write for two hours in his Highlands home offce, where he has arranged three desks in a U-shape, papers and books scattered on them. The 46-year-old likes the tight space, feeling cramped. It keeps him focused. For frst drafts, written longhand on grid paper, he works at the desk against the wall. "No reason to look anywhere besides what I'm working on," he says. Above that desk, a large map of Kentucky. He references it for his in-the-works fourth novel, keeping track of roads and towns for the plot about Fort Knox soldiers searching for a missing girl. Beside it, a poster of Samuel Beckett; Gann is a Beckett fanatic. On the walls there is artwork, big and small, all framed. A painting of a ghostly writer bent over an asymmetrical desk, pen in hand, papers stacked high and fying, sits near the window. Self portrait. Mostly bookshelves — old and beat up, but sturdy — line the walls. Gann guesses he has some 6,000 books in his collection. They overfow into the hallway, the living room. "It's a little bit of a sickness," he jokes. "They're a big distraction for me." STUDIO SHOT