Our New Graduates Are Being Published!

Plus a word to the wise on creative dry spells following craft growth

News from Anna

Anyone who has stuck with a creative discipline over time knows there’s a pretty common creative cycle that looks something like this:

Think of a creative pursuit you’re not trained in but dabble in and realize you enjoy, say painting. At first, painting is easy and fun. Maybe your initial enjoyment leads you to invest more by enrolling in a workshop. If the workshop is any good, it isn’t uncommon for the rapid upskilling to make you conscious of everything you’re doing wrong—you can become so consumed with ensuring you’re holding your brush right, mastering perspectives through geometry, and scaling proportions properly that you forget for a time why you liked painting in the first place.

This is where it’s key to keep going. Because just on the other side of mastering those skills is a breakthrough to even deeper enjoyment. 

It isn’t uncommon for this enjoyment-growing pain-enjoyment-growing pain cycle to repeat multiple times throughout the course of an artist’s life. Sometimes, each season lasts months, even years. Other times, they alternate so quickly that you can be in “growing pain/critical brain” for the first five minutes and then flip into “enjoyment/creative brain” and back again.

So if a creative dry spell happens in your writing as a result of increased craft knowledge (and it will if you stick with writing long enough), don’t worry. It’s normal. Expecting this cycle is half the battle. 

C.S. Lewis as Critic and Creative

Over at our publishing arm,

The Wood Between the Worlds

, Dn. Nicholas just spoke with Dr. Michael Ward about how C.S. Lewis managed to inhabit both critical and creative brain spaces well. You can listen to the full talk below.

News from Our Graduates

Our second cohort of writers just graduated, and they’re already producing wonderful work, some of which you can read below:

“What If We Look for God’s Glory. Right Here. Right Now?” By

Katie Andraski

“Wright’s Sunken Cathedral” by Dorian Wolfe

“The Grotto King” by

Andrew Steuer

We’ll be featuring more student work soon—including another very poignant short story—so be sure to subscribe to

The Wood Between the Worlds

for the latest fiction from our graduates!

Other grad news

Award-winning author and illustrator

Vesper Stamper

, who participated in our first St Basil cohort, has a new picture book available in collaboration with award-winning author Daniel Nayeri. You can learn more and pre-order your book here.

Until next time,

Anna