Third Mind: Creative Writing Through Visual Art

Making the connection between writing and visual art can activate what William Burroughs called "The Third Mind"—from the confluence of the two art forms, something new, or other, emerges. This new anthology of essays about the challenges and rewards of uniting art and writing not only demonstrates how visual art can spark wonderful student writing, but goes much further, offering novel insights into the creative process. The result, editors Foster and Prevallet demonstrate, produces a new spirit of collaboration, one which in turn opens up dramatic possibilities for teachers, students, and the classroom dynamic.

The 20 essays in Third Mind—by teachers, poets, writers, artists, and museum educators from across the country—offer ideas on a diverse array of artistic disciplines, among them, quilt-making, Chinese calligraphy, abstract painting, and photographic portraiture. Third Mind also features 20 pages of gorgeous color plates, as well as an inspiring bibliography of works on visual art and creative writing.

Tonya Foster teaches at the City College of New York and Cooper Union. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Callaloo, Western Humanities Review, The Hat, Gulf Coast, and Lungfull. Kristin Prevallet teaches writing at Pratt Institute and Cooper Union in New York City. She is the author of two books of poetry, and her essays on writing recently appeared in Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s and Women Writing Beat.