Objects from the five authors on the Slate/Whiting Second Novel List—which is a celebration of the “most brilliant second novels of the last five years”—are on display with an accompanying note about the object’s relevance to the writing of their books at the David Weeks Studio in Tribeca, New York.

Next to Daniel Alarcón’s At Night We Walk in Circles, sits a horseshoe; beside Helen DeWitt’s Lightning Rods, the John Foster Dulles Book of Humor; by Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women, a book called Slave Trade and Slavery; next to Eileen Myles’s Inferno, a can of “Café Bustelo,” a brand of Puerto Rican coffee; and beside Akhil Sharma’s Family Life, a stopwatch.

The stories about the objects vary in intensity and kind. Alarcón’s horseshoe, for example, was a gift from his friend Josh Begley, to whom he complained during the writing of At Night that he felt like an overconfident “blacksmith.”

“I felt like a blacksmith, I said, living and working at the dawn of the automobile, who’d wagered his and his family’s future on making horseshoes. Do you admire that blacksmith’s commitment to the traditional form, or do you shake your head at his lack of vision?

“A few days later, I got a box in the mail. When I opened it, I found a horseshoe. There was no note, but the message was simple enough to read: don’t give up.

“I keep this horseshoe on my desk at all times.”

Read more stories and take a virtual tour through the “museum” at the Whiting Foundation’s website.