exploring the work of writing & creating
It’s Mother’s Day weekend, so let me introduce you to my mother! My mom, Patty Voje, is an incredible artist and go-getter. Alongside her daily role modeling of what it is to be a creative entrepreneur, she’s also an accomplished fine artist and oil painter. She raised my sister Jane and me to be artistically independent and to embrace the highs and lows of the creative life.
Read MoreI’ve always had a physical journal to write in, and most of my non-journal writing projects still begin on a sheet of paper. This process feels sacred to me. Writing by hand feels more like I’m connecting with the “earth” of creating—making something in messy, slow, real life. It feels special.
Read MoreNadja Lubiw-Hazard recently won the 2021 Siskiyou Prize for Environmental Literature for her short story collection The Life of a Creature. A Toronto-based writer and veterinarian, she talked with me about her dual love of art and science, a writing career that started in the early years of motherhood, and why fiction is her chosen creative space.
Read More“Writing is rewriting” gives off a lot of that “practice makes perfect” energy, doesn’t it? It implies that you have to actually, you know, work and struggle. I like writing because in writing I don’t “have to rebuild all the time” in the way I have to do as a musician. But most expert writers seem to agree this is the real work of it all.
Read MoreChicano artist Jimmy Longoria is known for his colorful, layered style created with thousands of brushstrokes. A recipient of the prestigious Bush Foundation Fine Artist Fellowship, his work is on permanent display in Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art. Jimmy’s work also hangs in the homes or offices of United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Julián Castro, Keith Ellison, and other prominent politicians and community leaders.
Read MoreWhether or not you “believe” in resolutions or the blank slate of the New Year, the idea of stepping back and taking stock of ourselves allows for a useful reflection we might otherwise skip. The dictionary says “to resolve” is “to decide firmly on a course of action.” It’s really just about a little active planning: Who do you want to be? How will you do it?
Read MoreSugar Vendil is a New York City-based composer, pianist, choreographer, and interdisciplinary artist who performs her own solo music for piano and electronics and has a keyboard/synth duo with composer Trevor Gureckis. We chatted about Sugar’s processes of trial and error, self-critique, and the ongoing learning that is necessary to art-making.
Read MoreI try to keep separate notebooks for separate writing worlds: one for screenwriting, one for fiction, one for creative nonfiction, and so on. However, as my creative life has gotten ever crazier, I couldn’t tell you which notebook is which. At least I know I’m not alone. Even Mozart once wrote: “Altogether I have so much to do that often I do not know whether I am on my head or my heels.”
Read MoreWenonah Wilms is an award-winning screenwriter who won the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, and a second McKnight Fellowship all in 2018. She’s written over twenty feature-length screenplays and she’s had six short films produced. Wenonah is a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and Native American stories and characters figure prominently in her work.
Read MoreWhen I was a teenager (the nerdy classical pianist kind) my piano teacher repeatedly made it clear that competitions only matter if they help you. I competed in a lot of piano competitions at this time, so it was a little strange to hear that it was possible for them to not matter, but it made sense: if you don’t make it anywhere in a competition, life carries on and you continue on your path.
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