An ideal supplemental text for courses in creative writing, professional development, leadership studies, management studies, and publishing, with strategies for leadership- and community-building within academia and beyond its boundaries.

This book offers a practical guide to building community, fostering collaboration, and inspiring generosity through the creative arts. This collection of original essays features an accomplished roster of contributors with backgrounds in diverse fields, including literary translation, magazine editing, publishing, higher education, and curriculum design. By featuring successful writers who represent such a wide range of skillsets and career paths, this book helps students envision themselves as leaders in the university and well beyond its boundaries. 

In a cultural moment where graduates often seek meaningful careers outside of academia, this essay collection also offers an introduction to alt-ac career paths and the unique opportunities for effecting social change in these roles. Focusing on techniques that have broad applications for high school teachers, nonprofit leaders, community outreach organizations, and college classrooms, each chapter includes an original essay from a contemporary writer, editor, or nonprofit leader in the arts, culminating in a set of exercises for individuals and groups, which focus on empathy, citizenship, and community stewardship.

Contributors include Traci Brimhall, Chris Campanioni, Wendy Chen, Kristina Marie Darling, Ming Lauren Holden, John James, Dean Rader, and Zach Savich.

 

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over thirty volumes of poetry, essays, and fiction. An expert consultant with the United States Fulbright Commission and a twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Darling’s work has also been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, where she has held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a Poet and the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry, a 2024 Villa Lena Foundation Fellowship, a 2024 Civita Institute Fellowship, and eleven juried residencies at the American Academy in Rome. She has held academic appointments at Universidade do Porto, the European Law and Governance School, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, the American Research Center in Sofia, and the Leysin American School in Switzerland. A prolific public speaker with the Ovation Agency, Dr. Darling has also lectured at Yale University, the American University in Rome, Stanford University, where she leads a workshop in professional empowerment through their Continuing Studies Division, the New School, the University of Cyprus, The Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop, Cedar Crest College’s Pan-European MFA Program, and Webster University’s Geneva, Switzerland Campus, where she leads a biannual writing workshop for diplomats. Additionally, Dr. Darling has served on fellowship juries for the United States Fulbright Commission, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and many other awards in the United States and abroad. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she now divides her time between Greece, Alicante, and the Amalfi Coast.