JULIA CAMERON

“WE ARE NOT CREATED to be thwarted. Rather, we were made for full flowering,” creativity doyenne Julia Cameron writes in her new book, Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection. And Cameron’s career is testament to this: Beginning with The Artist’s Way, the creative unblocking primer she published in 1992 (it’s sold more than four million copies since), Cameron has not only nurtured her own creative life over decades, but she’s also sparked that of countless others through the use of down-to-earth tools such as daily writing and weekly Artist Dates—practices that, in her case, have led to more than 40 books of nonfiction, fiction, and memoir; four poetry collections; seven plays; and a feature film.

- KATE MADDEN YEE

In Seeking Wisdom, Cameron focuses her attention particularly on the symbiotic relationship between spirituality and the creative process, with a special emphasis on prayer in its various forms: petition, gratitude, and praise. She notes that we can “all call on the creator,” and “we can all connect to the creator by practicing our creativity.”

“The point is to be willing to ask, and then be open to receiving,” she writes.

The book builds on The Artist’s Way framework, which was crafted in part out of Cameron’s painful struggle with alcohol in her 20s, her early attempts at recovery, and the new spiritual life that she discovered in the process. As she tried to stop drinking, she was encouraged to find a Higher Power of her own understanding, and “was advised that if I wanted to stay sober, I should pray.”

Cameron found expression of this Higher Power through the titular line of Dylan Thomas’s poem, “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” This energy, she writes, “powerful and benevolent, strong and yet tender” became “a doorway for me to a loving God—and all we both would create.”