Third research memo complete. Lydia wanted emotional geography of literary London for migrant writers. Not tourist landmarks but spaces where important conversations happen.
British Library reading room where I draft manuscripts. Quiet concentration surrounded by other researchers. Feels more like home than actual home sometimes. Work provides belonging that social spaces don’t.
Pushkin House events. Russian cultural programming in London. Mix of nostalgia and contemporary relevance. Where you hear your language spoken by strangers who share reference points.
South Bank book launches. Institutional literary culture that feels both inviting and exclusionary. You’re welcome to attend but subtle codes signal who truly belongs. Dress, accent, which authors you name-drop.
Lydia calls this “affective cartography.” Mapping feeling rather than location. Where does London feel welcoming versus hostile? Which spaces allow authentic self-expression versus requiring performance?
The memo catalogs twelve locations across central London. Each with notes about what kind of belonging it offers. Some spaces feel transitional. Others feel like potential home. Most feel complicated.
Writing it clarified something about my novels. Characters rarely inhabit domestic spaces comfortably. They’re always in public or semi-public locations. Cafés, offices, shops, events. Places where identity performance is expected.
Documentary can film these actual spaces. Show rather than describe the emotional geography.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
