Creativity A Reader for Writers

Developed for courses in first-year writing, Creativity: A Reader for Writers includes an interdisciplinary mix of public, academic, and cultural reading selections. It provides students with the rhetorical knowledge and analytical strategies required to participate effectively in discussions about creativity by covering the major theories, modern research, and current issues in the field. Topics include:

-Cognitive mechanisms and creativity
-Creativity, personality, and motivation
-Family and social influences on creativity
-Child prodigies
-International perspectives
-Creativity and innovation in the workplace
-Marginalization of creative people due to race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomics
-Creativity and mental health
-Creativity and aging

Creativity: A Reader for Writers is part of a series of brief, single-topic readers from Oxford University Press designed for today's college writing courses. Each reader in this series approaches a topic of contemporary conversation from multiple perspectives.

Preface

1 The Creative Process
Isaac Asimov, "How Do People Get New Ideas?" MIT Technology Review
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "The Creative Personality" Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People
Steven Johnson, "The Adjacent Possible" Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Tina Seelig, "Inside Out and Outside In" inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity
D. Anthony Miles, "Creativity Theory"
Stephanie Freeman and Wendy Rountree, "Creativity from Beyond One's Natural Grasp: Finding Your Most Creative Ideas Through Spirituality"
Edward De Bono, "Creativity Workout" Creativity Workout: 61 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas

2 Creativity Myths
Bill Watterson, "Do You Have an Idea for a Story Yet?"
Scott Adams, "I'm Looking for an Employee Who Is Creative"
Scott Berkun, "Good Ideas are Hard to Find" The Myths of Innovation
Judith Schlesinger, "Blind Men and Elephant Parts" The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius
Todd Dewett, "The Five Marks of Real Innovators"

3 The Creative Workplace
Richard Florida, "Managing Creativity" The Rise of the Creative Class
Ed Catmull, "Fear and Failure" Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Tina Seelig, "The Table Kingdom" inGenius: Crash Course on Creativity
Todd Dewett, "Behold the Magic Graph"
Todd Dewett, "Long Live the Organizational Deviant"
Tom Fishburne, "The 8 Types of Bad Creative Critics"

4 Collaboration and Creativity
Joshua Wolf Shenk, "The Power of Two" The Atlantic
Keith Sawyer, "Small Sparks" Group Genius
Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson, "Collaboration in the Sandbox" Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World's Most Creative Corporate Playground
Hugh Hart, "Yes, and . . . 5 More Lessons in Improv-ing Collaboration and Creativity from Second City" www.fastcocreate.com

5 Creativity and the Arts
Howard Gardner, "Creativity across the Domains" Creating Minds
Ben Shahn, "On Nonconformity" The Shape of Content
Ellen Langer, "The More We Know the More Blind We Become" On Becoming an Artist
Henriette Klauser, "Going to the Movies: Creative Visualization and Writing" Writing on Both Sides of the Brain

6 The Creative Genius
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Where Is Creativity?" Creativity
Nancy C. Andreasen, "Secrets of the Creative Brain" The Atlantic
Phillippe Petit, "Chaos & Order" Creativity

7 Creativity Strategies and Hacks
A.J. Jacobs, "How to Be More Creative" Real Simple
Scott Berkun, "Creative Thinking Hacks" The Myths of Innovation
The Creative Group, "Innovation in the House: Creativity Lessons from Five Top In-House Creative Teams"
Ed Goodman and Dave Goodman, "The Spiral Thinking Guide"

Appendix A: Researching and Writing About Creativity
Appendix B: Answers to Puzzles and Games

Credits
Index