At Home With Elizabeth Bishop

We consider its lines to be the most elegant thing in Key West,” wrote poet Elizabeth Bishop to a friend upon purchasing the house at 624 White Street, where she would primarily live in Florida’s southernmost city from 1938 to 1946.

- Adrienne Raphel

During those years Bishop wrote most of North and South, her first published collection of poems, while peering out of the house’s windows and cultivating her lush tropical fruit garden. Now, after several decades of private ownership, Bishop’s former residence will become a public haven for poetry and prose.

In November 2019 the Key West Literary Seminar (KW LS), a nonprofit organization that runs residencies, conferences, and programming, including a thriving literary festival held every January, acquired the house and its grounds for $1.2 million. As Arlo Haskell, the executive director of KWLS, puts it, promoting Elizabeth Bishop’s history is central to the organization’s mission of advancing literary culture in the area: “Telling Elizabeth Bishop’s story as a young woman coming to Key West, discovering writing, sharpening her powers of observation—that’s a beautiful legacy any young writer can tap into.” The house will become KWLS’s crown jewel, serving as its operating headquarters as well as a venue for readings, lectures, classes, and tours. “Day in and day out it will be where we do our work to tell the story of literary Key West,” says Haskell.