Creativity and "the Paris Review" Interviews

Ronda Leathers Dively—retired Southern Illinois University Rhetoric and Composition Professor and writing program administrator—is the author of Preludes to Insight: Creativity, Incubation and Expository Writing (Hampton Press, 2006); Invention and Craft: A Guide to College Writing (McGraw-Hill, Inc., 2016); Invention and Craft 2E: Exercising Creativity in College Writing and Research (Anthem Press, 2024) and numerous articles on expository writing pedagogy and writing program administration.

• List of Illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Impetus, Contexts and Methods; 2. Composition through the Lens of Creativity Theory; 3. First Insight, or the Glimmer of Possibility; 4. Preparation, or Research Broadly Conceived; 5. Incubation, or Breaks from Conscious Attention; 6. Insight, or the Eureka Experience; 7. Verification, or Evaluation; 8. Emergent Patterns; 9. Implications for Writing Instruction; Appendix A: Coding Table; Appendix B: List of Cited Paris Review Interviewees; Appendix C: Diagram of Analytical Categories, Subcategories and Themes; References; Index.

“Using the respected Paris Review Interviews of well-known writers of fiction and nonfiction as a base, Ronda Dively has applied creativity theory to offer thoughtful, qualitative analyses of how writers write and think. The resulting look inside experts’ literate processes offers rich insights for the teaching and learning of writing.” — Alice Horning, Oakland University, US