The Art & Insanity of Creativity issue is now LIVE at Hunger Mountain

The long wait is over everyone! The annual print edition has been put to bed and before the year is up will be turning up in subscriber mailboxes as well as brick and mortar stores and the fall YA & Children's issue is rolling out new content.

From my editorial letter:

Dear reader,

Welcome to the Art & Insanity of Creativity issue. While this issue’s theme may sound tongue in cheek, it is anything but. To quote Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957) “A person needs a little madness, or else they dare never cut the rope and be free.” Kazantzakis’ quote points to artist as rebel. Artist as free thinker. Artist going against the societal ties that bind us all. An artist is all these things—and therefore an artist needs the courage to examine the world we live in and our own human nature.

And then we have psychiatrist, scholar, and bipolar patient Dr. Kay Redfield Jameson whose book Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament intends:

…to make a literary, biographical, and scientific argument for a compelling association, not to say an actual overlap, between two temperaments—the artistic and the manic depressive—and their relationships to the rhythms and cycles, or temperament of the natural world. The emphasis will be on understanding the relationship between moods and imagination, the nature of moods—their variety, their contrary and oppositional qualities, their flux, their extremes (causing in some individuals occasional bouts of ‘madness’)—and the importance of moods in igniting thought, changing perceptions, creating chaos, forcing order upon that chaos, and  enabling transformation. (5)

In reading Jameson’s book for research for an upcoming novel of mine, and to understand an illness that has touched my family’s life in many ways, I began to see and make connections I hadn’t before. Any illness—cancer, diabetes, bipolar disorder—is scary and can be life-threatening but it also can be life-affirming. That is where art and artistry comes in: exploring the dark, wandering there, with the sole purpose of finding the light.

In this issue, we will have pieces on the artistry of teaching (with Debby Dahl Edwardson, current NBA finalist both last week and this week), the market’s “obsession” with dystopia, how to overcome fear in our work, an In Response essay by Andew Karre, Editorial Director at Carolrhoda Books on our In Defense of YA piece and my YA is NOT a Genre essay, which appears over  at Hunger Mountain blog Another Loose Sally,  a word play exercise with Children’s Poetry Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, as well as fiction and poetry which play with extremes and bring order to the chaos of the character’s lives.

This week, we welcome Kirsten Cappy of Curious City in our Industry Insider with her ode to REM, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It…” which delves into the multifaceted work that Kirsten does with her Curious City clients. We offer new fiction by novelist Jennifer Hubbard with The Stage Manager and A Cut-Out Face by Mima Tipper—both of which are psychological studies as well as damn fine short stories. And, we debut the first of our features for this issue with Bobbie Pyron’s brave essay The Perks of Being Bipolar. 

And lest this issue sound too serious—do not fear— there is plenty to chuckle at and laugh with in the pieces above and the pieces to come. So, please stop back often. Read, respond and let this issue aid the art and insanity in your creativity.

Best,
Bethany Hegedus, YA and Children’s Lit Editor


We are now accepting pieces for consideration for our Winter 2012 issue The Magic & Mystery of Identity and our Spring 2012 issue The Landscape of Literature. Please see here for submission guidelines. *Note: there is now a $3.00 submissions fee which is not a reader fee, but a charge that helps fund the cost of the online submissions manager. Since our readers and editors are scattered around the globe, snail mail submissions, which would also cost submitters roughly $3, are not viable. Thank you for your continued support of Hunger Mountain.*