12/04/2025
A few days ago I sent this out to the folks on my VIP email list and got such great responses!
I want to share it here, and also each day for the next week I want to share a little bit about why each gift idea made it into the guide-- today, I'd like to talk more about gift idea number 2: Books that inspire creative boldness!
Whatever else I'm doing in my life, reading will always have a central place. I read a lot of different kinds of books, but for this gift guide I focused on the books that have inspired me to pursue a creative life with intention and boldness.
I won't explain every single book on the list, but a few worth highlighting:
Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, is a generous invitation-slash-permission-slip to begin whatever creative idea is knocking at your door. Without regard for being/getting "good" at it, without justifying it to anyone, without putting stakes on it. Just start doing it: it is a human right to respond to your creative urges.
Your Brain on Art, by Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross, is a great read after Big Magic because it kind of puts the proof into Gilbert's pudding. A compilation of scientific studies and results of arts-based programs showing the documentable and tangible results of engaging with art.
Ninth Street Women, by Mary Gabriel, is absolute tour de force five-way biography of leading women in the abstract expressionist movement; a "feels like I'm there" immersion in the midcentury New York City art scene. It's long as f**k but I was never bored with it (and the last 20% is all footnotes and such).
Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey, is a cranky and gorgeous love letter to Red Rock Canyon country. In addition to being an environmentalist and adventurer, and a some-times-sort-of park ranger, Abbey is a writer - an artist. Whatever else he might have been for good or ill, he found what he needed to let his writing flourish, and he wrote about what his heart wanted: to be in the desert. And he writes it so well that anyone else whose heart wants to be in the desert can't not read and love this book.
The Baby on the Fire Escape, by Julie Phillips, is a must read book for women with kids who also are insistent on pursing a creative career. It's a journey through the lives of women writers and artists who also were mothers - and the choices they made around parenting to maintain their ability to create.
Those are the ones I most want to highlight in my collection of recommendations. You can see my full collection through my "storefront" with Bookshop.org (an amazing online "shop" that directs your book orders through independent bookstores across the country - yes you can pick if you want to!) Bookshop.org also has a generous affiliate program so if you order a book through my little storefront, I get a small percentage too. You can support your OWN creative endeavours, a local independent bookstore, AND an artist you know - ME- all in one purchase! Everybody wins (except Bezos, so, you know, just one more reason... ) ;)
Link to my Bookshop.org storefront in the comments!
