Creativity & Constraint

Creativity & Constraint, A Wising Up Anthology Heather Tosteson, Charles D. Brockett, Kerry Langan, Michele Markarian, Editors We often think of true creativity as unfettered liberty-but is creativity something that only takes root, flourishes, within bounds? What happens to our ideas if they must work their way through the material world-often being materially changed in the process? Why is it that we often feel more empowered, more intimately related within the artifice of a story, a song, a painting than we do in the world at large? What do we learn when we try to take that expansiveness back out into the world? What, if anything, do experiences of creativity and constraint have to do with real world challenges, where our desires and drives are checked daily, where our playing fields are far from level, where hard work isn't always rewarded? Join forty writers of poetry, fiction and memoir as they muse on the various permutations of creativity and constraint in their own lives and in their artistic process. Contributors: Deborah Bacharach, Patricia Barone, Barbara Crooker, Vida Cross, Deborah Pratt Curtiss, Maureen Tolman Flannery, Diane Giardi, Jo Going, Jim Govoni, John Grey, Patrick Hansel, Michael J. Hess, Paul Hostovsky, Céline Keating, Tom Leskiw, Katharyn Howd Machan, Mike Maggio, John Manesis, Michele Markarian, Milt Montague, Michael Onofrey, Carl Palmer, Richard King Perkins II, Mary Kay Rummel, Frank Salvidio, Ira Schaeffer, Ruth Margolin Silin, Laurence Snydal, Anna Steegmann, J.J. Steinfeld, Alan Swyer, Don Thackrey, Hannah Thomassen, Claudia Van Gerven, Bill Vernon, Rosemary Volz, Joel Wachman, Petra Dai Walech, John Sibley Williams, Tyree Deshawn Wilson