My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it’s what my children call my ’dead author wall.’ I have signatures from Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Jack London, Harriett Beecher Stowe, Pearl Buck, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, to name a few.

Macomber’s remark is a wry, affectionate glimpse into a working writer’s private shrine: a wall of autographs that functions as both memorabilia and lineage. Calling it a “dead author wall” (via her children) punctures any pretension and underscores how literary greatness can feel simultaneously intimate and distant—present as ink on paper, absent as living company. The list of names signals a personal canon and a sense of apprenticeship: surrounding herself with signatures of admired predecessors becomes a daily reminder of craft, ambition, and continuity. It also hints at collecting as a way of making the solitary labor of writing feel connected to a broader tradition.