Anne Trubek

Anne Trubek is the author of the forthcoming book A Skeptic's Guide To Writers' Houses. She is an associate professor at Oberlin College.

Recent Articles

A Museum of One's Own

Can writers' former homes become tourist destinations? The odds are long and the payoff is low.

(AP/Bebeto Matthews)

It's hard to imagine the two-story house on East 86th Street in Cleveland's Fairfax neighborhood ever becoming a tourist destination. Pizza crusts, empty bags of spicy potato chips, and wrapping papers litter the green carpet. Huge holes dot the walls where the fixtures have been ripped out. The back door is open. "People will spend all day trying to get 10 cents worth of copper," says Jay Gardner, the community-development director for the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, as he picks up an old grate and puts it across the door latch to prevent another break-in.