The Novelists Are Fighting Over Desks

Around four on a recent Thursday afternoon, the second floor of the Center for Fiction buzzed with a near-silent hum of productivity. Light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows as writers hunched over their laptops. A giant mural of Toni Morrison smiled in the stairwell. A lost-and-found table bore more forgotten water bottles than an Ultimate Frisbee tournament. But all was not well at the literary nonprofit: Sometimes, especially on weekday mornings, there aren’t enough desks. “Everybody is complaining,” says a current member, a novelist. And there was more trouble on the horizon: “It’s going to get worse when it’s too cold to use the outdoor terrace.”