David Biespiel cracks open the creative process as he candidly tracks his own development as a writer and challenges traditional assumptions about writing that can stifle creativity. The liberating message: Working past the brink of failure--being free to try and discard and try again--is what allows the creative process to playfully flourish, keeping the spirit open to unexpected discoveries. Both beginning and experienced writers—as well as artists, musicians, dancers, and anyone else on a creative path—will benefit from this elegant, surprising, and fresh perspective.
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"Finally, an anti-bullshit book on creativity!"
— James Marcus
"Does for the creative process what Strunk and White did for our approach to grammar and style. Indispensable."
— Marjorie Sandor
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"Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces instead of the advice de rigueur, is a well-spring of ideas for how to jump start the creative process, valuable examples of athletic and visual artists who exercise this proposed method, and, perhaps most importantly, oodles of empathy for the writer and artist who is battling their own stuck process and potentially self-doubt or frustration."
— Hazel & Wren
Photo Credit: Marion Ettlinger
Texan, author of eleven books of poetry, criticism, memoir, and fiction, editor of two anthologies, professor for nearly forty years, including at Stanford, Maryland, Wake Forest, and George Washington universities, the last twenty-some at Oregon State University as Poet-in-Residence, founder of the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters in Portland, editor of Poetry Northwest from 2005-2010, contributor to Air/Light, American Poetry Review, Bookforum, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Literary Imagination, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, New Republic, New York Times, The New Yorker, Parnassus, Partisan, Poetry, Poery International, Politico, The Rumpus, Sewanee Review, Slate, the Washington Post, and many other literary magazines, recipient of Lannan, National Endowment for the Arts, and Stegner fellowships, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, two Oregon Book Awards (in poetry and nonfiction), twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award.
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David Biespiel's first book, Shattering Air, was published in 1996 by BOA Editions, with an introduction by Stanley Plumly. The University of Washington Press published his next major volumes of poetry, edited by Linda Bierds: Wild Civility (2003), The Book of Men and Women (2009), Charming Gardeners (2013), and Republic Café (2019).
His nonfiction includes A Place of Exodus: Home, Memory, and Texas (Kelson Books, 2020, memoir), The Education of a Young Poet (Counterpoint, 2017, memoir), which was selected a Best Books for Writers by Poets & Writers, A Long High Whistle: Selected Columns on Poetry (Antilever, 2015, criticism), drawn from his ten years as poetry columnist for The Oregonian, and Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces, (Kelson Books, 2010), with a tenth anniversary edition, introduced by novelist Chuck Palahniuk, published in 2020.
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He is the editor of the definitive edition of contemporary Pacific Northwest poets, Long Journey, published by Oregon State University Press in 2006, and the Everyman Library's edition of Poets of the American South, published by Random House in 2014.
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His first novel, A Self-Portrait in the Year of the High Commission on Love, appeared in 2023.
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David Biespiel lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, the poet and essayist Wendy Willis.