The Writer

Douglas Fenn Wilson’s second love––after the visual arts––is literature, fiction in particular.While painting and sculpture remain his economic mainstays, he devotes major blocks of time to writing. In 1989 he trekked to Ravello, Italy for a year, where he began drafting his first novel Postumus Lovers. Detailed historical research and commissioned works of art made the going slow, but in 1992 he completed the book’s first draft––1600 manuscript pages! With the guidance of an editor and a New York literary agent, Wilson settled in to edit. Over the next seven years (1993-2000) he completed five revisions, each of which narrowed the book’s length and historical breadth, and saw a major tightening of his prose.

While the book began its journey into the publishing jungle, Wilson turned to short fiction. He completed his first story in 1999 and every year since has written at least two. Each of the stories uses as a point of departure a favorite painting. Characters inanimate in paint and canvas step briefly out of frames to revisit a poignant life passage. A collection of ten stories, linked together into a kind of gallery, is Wilson’s vision.

Of course a bigger story––a second novel loosely built around the paintings of Winslow Homer––is already taking shape in his mind, a project he hopes to get underway in early 2006.

NOTE: While Postumus Lovers has not yet negotiated the publishing world’s many hurtles and is not currently published, it represents a full decade of work, seven of those years devoted to full time writing––a book which may yet have its moment.

Learn more about Wilson's novel.

Learn more about Wilson's short fiction.

Writer's resume.