Carey Wallace is the author of The Blind Contessa’s New Machine, which tells the story of the invention of the typewriter in 1808 by an Italian count for a blind woman so that she could write him letters. It’s a love story, but it’s also about the imagination and how it fails us. Patti Smith, one of Wallace’s heroes, called it “exquisitely written” and “a jewel. Now Wallace has trained her focus on artistic inspiration, both how it is historically discussed in relationship to artists, and how we as contemporary working artists might honor, cultivate, and capture it.

Deep beneath layers of digital dust in the archives of my hard drive, an angry bird is waiting, wondering if he’ll ever see me again. Somewhere around 2004, I was in my eighth year of drafting three different novels when a publisher suddenly showed interest in one of them—an epic fantasy—and the other two, both…

Does the imagination play a role in spiritual experience, I asked. How about in religious experience? On a Thursday morning late in the semester, a dozen undergraduates–honors students–and I gathered in a circle in the Laurel Forum, a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along one wall, another wall all windows opening onto the campus quad. A…

This winter has been a difficult season.  I emerge from it wondering about the edges of my griefs and my joys, feeling around for my moorings, realizing in a new way the isolation of the single parent, the reality of mortality for aging and ill family members, the uneven texture of heartbreak, how it feels…

Fridays used to be pizza and a movie nights, growing up. My dad would bring home a ridiculously greasy pizza from a little place in the next town over called Pizza Stop. It was on one of these nights, as I recall, that we watched DeMille’s Ten Commandments. As good churchgoing Christians, we knew the…

When the email came in from my editor, I wasn’t sure how to answer. What do you want to do next? After years—a decade, really—of what felt like pushing a boulder up a mountain, sitting down every night to write no matter if my family was watching a movie or there was ice cream being…

How do poets and writers choose their book titles? I didn’t have a good answer to the question, “Why did you choose the title Love Nailed to the Doorpost?” posed at a recent reading, though I knew that sooner or later that someone would ask. I did have a superficial answer, but I hadn’t thought…

This post originally appeared as a web-exclusive interview accompanying Image journal issue 58. Mary Kenagy Mitchell for Image: You’ve written in our new issue about balancing songwriting with being a mother. What does your son think of your music? Does he come hear you play?  Claire Holley: Well, his preferences seem to change a lot. When…