The appeal of place

There is an entire field dedicated to the study of place-based literature (spatial studies) and it is interdisciplinary, but there is less discussion about the draw of particular places for writers. Why do certain writers choose the places they set their stories in? This could be extrapolated out into the examination of how secondary world fantasy and science-fiction draw on mimetic qualities of our real world, or it could be a closer examination of why an author chooses to set their narrative in New York instead of Las Vegas.

There are already a number of authors who have written in the same places, drawing from locales that have personal meaning. It would be interesting to look at the decisions they made around returning to particular settings. For example, Coco Mellows uses New York in both her novels, but in the second also draws on London where she lived for a time. But other authors use locations they have never lived, but perhaps have an affinity with. It would be interesting to explore, from a writer's perspective rather than a theorist's perspective, how writers choose the places that resonate in and across their works.