The Fire Inside A Companion for the Creative Life

Wherever you are in your creative life---just tiptoeing in or fully immersed, The Fire Inside can be a source of encouragement and inspiration.

Rodin said that "The main thing is to be moved, to love, to tremble, to live." In other words, to be fully engaged in life and the creativity that exists within.

The Fire Inside, through a well-researched collection of essays and heart-opening personal stories, invites readers to uncover their unique talents and live out their individual dreams.

Within each one of us are vast untapped reservoirs of creativity, and when we connect with that potential, our lives will open in wonderful and joy-filled ways.

Few books on creativity are so inclusive, so welcoming as this book, offering insight not only for furthering one's abilities in the traditional arts, but also in the day to day creativity which so enriches our lives. Based on the authors' combined fifty-five years of teaching and presenting workshops on writing and creativity, The Fire Inside is written in a spirit of warmth and generosity. It invites the reader to say yes to creativity, choose to live a bigger life, and discover how "the magic" happens.

These writers have great authority and expertise on this topic. They write ideas that are fresh and new with profound potential for empowering readers as well as writers, connecting them with their honest, authentic peers." - Mary Pipher, author of The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture and Writing to Change the World

Lucy Adkins earned her MFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is a writer of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in many journals and anthologies, and her first poetry chapbook, One Life Shining, was published by Pudding House Press. She co-presents the Nebraska Humanities program "Diaries and Letters of Early Nebraska Settlers," and is a frequent writing instructor for OLLI, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and the Larksong Writers' Workshops. Becky Breed, a veteran educator, poet, and essayist, co-wrote and facilitated "Women at the Springs," a Nebraska Humanities program empowering women to act and live more courageously, as well as "The Intergenerational Project" connecting elders and teens through stories to promote communication, writing, and use of the media. She has an Ed.D. in Education, and in addition to teaching at the university level, has been a principal at an alternative high school.