Creativity and madness, linked? Writers of the past, Lord Byron, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Virginia Woolf, William Styron, and William Blake might say, “Yes, indeed.” Some of these lives have been well documented, lineage traced back to secret (and not so secret) mental illnesses. What is the “artistic temperament,” and why does having one seem to carry a negative connotation? We will read writers mentioned above, as well as excerpts from Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison’s, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. You may respond to what we read and
discuss through genres of your choice, which you may share for workshop, share privately with me, or keep entirely private. By the end of this class, you will have writing inspired by and written through your own artistic temperament, whatever that turns out to be!