Author Shares Her Beach Home

A piece of solitude, on loan

Author Adeline Yen Mah and her husband understand what writers need, so they've opened their Laguna Beach residence as the ultimate retreat.

By Janet Eastman

October 19, 2006

ANDREW WINER has characters and dialogues and plot lines in his head that get drowned out by 

the distractions at home. So each weekday afternoon, the author of the coming-of-age bestseller 

“The Color Midnight Made”kisses his wife and toddler goodbye, bundles up his laptop and notes 

for a second novel,and drives to a place where he can conjure an imaginary world.

E.L. Doctorow said that all he needed to write was a blank wall. Eudora Welty created all of her 

fiction in her family home. Winer has found that he prefers the foreign silence and solitude of 

someone else’s house to get the job done— a fact he has discovered asthe first personto be in- 

vited by author Adeline Yen Mahand her husband, Bob, to use their weekend residence in Laguna Beach as a 

writer’s retreat. No cost, no interruptions, no time limit.

When Winer finishes his book, the Mahs plan to open the six-bedroom dwelling to other writers. Forthe couple, 

who had lucrative careers in science before retiring, the gifted space fulfills their dream of supporting emerging and 

established writers. In their starkly modern retreat, Winer has found a place where he can composeand revise his 

complicated story about art, marriage, religion and false identity set in Vienna during World War II. He credits an increased 

flow of prose to working in this expan- 

sive, almost empty place that lets his 

creativity roam.

“I can’t be left alone in our cottage 

because my daughter will find me, and I 

worked for years at the public library, 

but I found I was always shushing loud 

talkers and cellphone users and that got 

my heart racing,” says Winer, standing 

in the Mahs’ elevated living room with 

soaring windows that frame a Zen gar- 

den and the ocean.

“But here it’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ 

such a different world. It’s quiet and the 

angles of the house draw me out into the 

canyon, air and space. I feel as if I’m 

floating on the edge of something, and 

there is a sense of limitlessness and po- 

tential.”

Though it may seem counterintuitive 

to start a deeply personal endeavor like 

writing in a place that by definition isn’t 

personal, Winer says the Mahs’ gesture 

inspires a sense of purpose and has be- 

come a symbol of encouragement — 

from one writer to another. “It’s not just 

any other house,” he says. “It’s about 

writing.”

Winer likes to work at a table in the 

dining room, facing a wall of glass, but 

after a while he no longer notices the 

view. Instead, he’s transported into 

whatever scene he’s constructing. 

“I have New York agents who ask, 

‘How do you ever get anything done in 

California? You just want to surf. You 

write, then walk on the beach,’” says 

Winer, who also teaches at UC Riverside 

in its master’s program in creative writ- 

ing. “I tell them that I don’t want any- 

thing to affect whatever emotion is 

called for, but I also don’t believe that a 

writer has to be in a banal or ugly place 

to work.”

When the momentum stops, Winer 

simply walks out to one of the terraces. 

“This place makes me feel a little more  free,” he says. “Unencumbered.”

THE house, as Adeline

envisioned it, needed 

privacy but also a sense 

of community, a colony 

where storytellers could 

gather and share their 

struggle of capturing the 

right words on a page.

“Writing is a solitary experience and 

although writers are not all alike, I think 

many of us would like to have a serene 

environment,” says Adeline, 68, a former 

physician who spent decades scribbling 

thoughts in hospital dining halls before 

quitting medicine to complete “Falling 

Leaves,”her 1997million-selling memoir 

about growing up in China, unwanted 

by her family. “For myself, I also need 

the company of interesting people for in- 

tellectual stimulation between bouts of 

writing.”

The couple bought this contempo- 

rary house from a developer before it 

was completed in 2004, with the inten- 

tion of making it a writers retreat. They 

spent a year redesigning it with archi- 

tect David M. Parker.The floors are pol- 

ished concrete, the Modernist furnish- 

ings selected by Adeline. On the walls 

are abstract paintings by Bob, 73, a 

UCLA microbiology professor who 

started painting after he retired. 

The décor is spare, even austere in 

places; some rooms look as blank as a 

new sheet of paper.

“Writers need to have a place that is 

uncluttered and aesthetically appealing 

to inspire what comes forth,” says Ade- 

line, who writes in a white-walled office 

in the couple’s longtime Huntington 

Beach home and spends weekends in 

the Laguna Beach house hosting din- 

ners for artists.

Instead of showy furnishings and fin- 

ishes, this house shines with its unpre- 

dictable architectural lines. 

The galvanized-iron roof rises and 

falls in seemingly random fashion. The 

largest window in front is an angular 

oddity, slanted at one end and wedged 

into place like a geometric jigsaw puzzle 

piece. Inside, steel supports lean at 45 

degrees, corridors jig and jag, and 

railings bow like actors after a perform- 

ance.

The couple liked the galley kitchen’s 

asymmetrical walls but thought the 

center island took up too much space. It 

was removed to make room for a built-in 

banquette.

“Writers can sit and talk here,” says 

Adeline, looking out the window at the 

view that extends to Santa Catalina Is- 

land. 

COLONIES for writers,

composers, designers 

and other artists have ex- 

isted in the United States 

for more than a century. 

Of the 250 identified by 

the Rhode Island-based 

Alliance of Artists Communities, about 

three-quarters have been founded in the 

past 25 years. Most offer room and 

board for a few days to a few months, 

and 60% don’t charge a fee, says alliance 

program director Caitlin Strokosch. 

The two best-known artists’ commu- 

nities in Southern California are the 

18th Street Arts Centerin Santa Monica 

and the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, 

arustic retreat in Temecula beloved by 

“The Lovely Bones” author Alice Se- 

bold. It’s being rebuilt after its 10 build- 

ings burned in 2004. 

Although most colonies are in rural 

settings, isolating participants from big- 

city noise, more are being built in urban 

areas, Strokosch says, adding, “Having 

aplace to retreat to is inspiring in itself.” 

The Mahs wanted to start modestly 

and in their own community. 

“I’m merely giving my dream a trial 

run on a very small scale,” says Adeline, 

sitting with Bob in two reclining chairs 

in the den off the kitchen. They acknowl- 

edge that the screening process will be 

difficult. Once the word spreads, how 

will they decide who gets a key to the 

front door? How many writers can com- 

fortably work in the 5,500-square-foot 

house at the same time, and how long 

can they stay? 

“We haven’t come up with the house 

rules yet,” Adeline says, who adds that 

no applications are being accepted. The 

would like to have a serene environment.”