Chris Vola

Chris Vola is a writer and bartender based in New York. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA program, he is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories, three books of poems, a coffee-table conspiracy theory book, and three books of cocktail recipes. His most recent work is The Cocktail Atlas: Around the World in 200+ Drinks, a collection of beverages from 195 countries and an exploration of global spirits culture.

I came to the Fish Factory because I wanted to flee the noise of the city to work on my next book, Drink One for the Team, which celebrates global sporting events by pairing them with appropriately themed cocktails. What I found in Stöðvarfjörður was less of an escape than a revelation, from the jagged exquisiteness of the mountains and fjords and drastically shifting weather to the hushed village streets and the inimitable energy of the studio.

I finished as much of the book as I needed to – East Iceland in January isn’t exactly heavy on distractions – but the best moments had little to do with rigid productivity. Hiking to nearby beaches, geological formations, and the harbor (when there weren’t power-outage-inducing blizzards), chatting with other artists, vibing to live Icelandic punk rock, and taking in the aurora, polar stratospheric clouds, reindeer, etc., tapped into a creative flow state that had been absent for a couple years. I wrote some poems and restarted work on a collection of haiga – a Japanese artform featuring a short poem (haiku, senryu) combined with a visual element (photography in this case) – based on my travels in the Nordic countries. Stöðvarfjörður will undoubtedly feature heavily in the final version of the project. Something, along with my time at the Fish Factory, for which I will always be grateful.