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A tour of the room

The desk

Come in from the street and the noise drops away. What follows is a short tour of the room, taken the way a visitor would take it: first the door, then the shelves, the pages, the catalogue and the margins, and last of all the things we have chosen to leave out.

Bay I

An open door

Nobody is asked for a ticket. Any visitor may read any shelf in the room, at no charge, without registering or paying, and the pages are rendered on the server so they arrive quickly even over a modest connection or on a phone.

  • Free to read, with no paywall
  • No registration of any kind for readers
  • Light, server-rendered pages that sit comfortably on small screens

Bay II

Shelves kept by their writers

Each writer in residence keeps a blog at a short address of the form /their-handle/. At its head stand a portrait and a few lines of biography, with room for a link to the writer’s own website should they wish. Beneath that, the writer may compose an opening note of their own: a guide to the shelf, a handful of favourite pieces, or word of what is in progress.

  • Portrait, short biography and an optional website link
  • An opening note written by the shelf’s keeper
  • Drawers (categories) the writer names and arranges

Bay III

A page worth sitting with

Essays are set in a serif face at an unhurried measure, with space between the lines, much as a well-printed book would set them. A cover picture may head a piece, though none is required, and images are kept on the site itself. Where a piece runs long, a table of contents lets the reader see how the argument is built and turn straight to the passage they want.

  • Typefaces that carry every Vietnamese diacritic, and other accents besides
  • Contents lists on the longer pieces
  • Optional cover images, hosted here

Bay IV

A catalogue that remembers

Notes are of little use if they cannot be found a second time. A writer may place each post in one of their drawers and give it subject headings (tags); every heading leads to a topic page that gathers related pieces from across the room. The archive is dated, paged and kept in order, and anyone who prefers to be told of new work can subscribe.

  • Drawers within each writer’s blog
  • Topic pages that collect posts under one subject heading
  • A feed at /handle/feed.xml for each writer and at /feed.xml for the room as a whole

Bay V

Notes in the margin

A reader who wishes to answer a piece may do so with nothing more than a name and a few lines; we ask for no email address and no sign-in. Each such note waits with a moderator, who reads it before it is placed beneath the post. A note that is still waiting after 30 days, never having been approved, is cleared away without ceremony.

  • A name and a comment are all that is asked
  • Every guest note is read before it is shown
  • A writer’s replies under their own work are marked as the author’s

Bay VI

What we chose to leave out

A reading room has no business watching the people in its chairs. You will find no analytics here, no advertisements, no tracking pixels and no scripts fetched from elsewhere. A visitor who only reads, or who leaves a note, is given no cookie whatsoever. The single cookie the site ever sets belongs to an administrator, and only while they are signed in.

  • No advertising, analytics or trackers
  • Not a single cookie for visitors
  • Every page served over HTTPS

Bay VII

The writer’s work remains the writer’s

Whatever a writer files here stays their property. All the room requires is leave to keep it, show it and pass it along by RSS. Links inside a post are plain links, so a writer may cite their sources and point to their own site as they please. Should a writer wish a single piece, or the whole shelf, taken down, they need only ask.

  • Ownership stays with the author
  • Plain links to sources and to the writer’s own site
  • Removal on request, through the correspondence page

On being given a shelf

Places at the writing desks are offered by invitation; there is no form by which to enrol oneself. If you would like to be considered, write to us from the correspondence page, choose “Asking for a shelf”, and tell us something of what you write. Readers, by contrast, need do nothing at all: walk in, and the shelves are yours to browse.