Cornflowers, dandelions, maple trees, and all the rest of their towering and tiny green cousins send out their seeds on the winds, hoping to find fertile ground. Inspiration is much the same. A book, a song, a poem might land in just the right spot for you, on just the right day, giving life to a new idea. In the first Sunday of each month, I send out a handful of seeds that have drifted into my own path, in the hope that their beauty or their poignancy or their curiosity feeds your creativity.
QUICK WORKSHOP NEWS: My mini-retreat “Story Workshop Weekend” is now open for registration at the McTavish Academy of Art. If you have an idea for a story or novel and want to explore it, join us for two days of creative writing exercises, group work, brainstorming and critiquing. Click here for more info and to register.
These brooms! We went to Vancouver recently and stopped into Granville Island Broom Company. Founded by sisters Mary and Sarah Schweiger, this shop has a gorgeous array of birch, hickory, manzanita and hockey stick (!) brooms, all handmade in the Shaker style. And the smell! Heaven!
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson. Lush, lyrical, and nuanced, it’s set in 1491 during the last sultanate of the Iberian peninsula and follows Fatima—a concubine desperate for freedom—and her dearest friend Hassan—a mapmaker who can bend the shape of reality with his drawings—as they flee the Spanish Inquisition in search of a mythical island ruled by the Bird King.
Mr. Death by Alix E. Harrow. This short story was published in 2021, and it still makes my heart feel like it’s been packed with wet sand when I think about it. Content warnings aplenty. Please don’t read it unless you’re ready to feel some BIG emotions.
This poetry prompt by Joseph Fasano, which made the rounds on Twitter and birthed some spectacularly moving poems.
”Let the (noun) be (adjective).
Let the (noun) be (adjective).
Let every (noun) inside me find its (noun)
and (verb) (adverb), (adverb) toward this world.
I have a story I have never told:
Once, when I was (adjective),
I looked up at the (noun) and saw the (noun)
and knew I was a/an (noun) made of (noun).
I am still a/an (repeat bolded noun) made of (repeat italicized noun).
Contemporary Ukrainian painter Olesya Hudyma, but particularly “Woman With Dove Angel of Peace,” which is on her home page.