William Faulkner in New Orleans — 624 Pirate's Alley

In 1925, William Faulkner rented a room at 624 Pirate's Alley, next door to St. Louis Cathedral, and wrote his first novel. Soldiers' Pay was composed here while he shared cheap wine with Sherwood Anderson. The apprenticeship happened in this room — Faulkner left for Oxford, Mississippi within a year, but the work that started him was finished in the French Quarter. The building is now Faulkner House Books, run by the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society. The bookshop is tiny but open to the public. Tuck into Pirate's Alley behind the cathedral — the room where a novelist learned his trade is still there, now stocked with the kind of books that matter in a city where writers have always gone to figure out what they're doing.