In this article, the author explores what a sense of place is and how various authors convey that in their work. She states that writers imbue their work with a sense of place through longing and distance from that place, distilled through imagination. "Could Harper Lee have created Maycomb, Alabama on the page without leaving the South and going to New York," she asks. Many writers have experienced nomadic childhoods and still find their way to "places of the heart." She describes a writing exercise in a picture book workshop led by George Ella Lyon at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky where she was asked to visualize a childhood place where she had always felt safe and then write a poem about it. This exercise eventually led to the 2005 publication of the author's picture book titled "Root Beer and Banana."