Writing
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The Power of Art as Witness: Call Me Down the Rain
The second Creative Thresholds issue in July was a very special one and perhaps one of the most important ones we’ve done. It was a series of poems dealing with attacks by Boko Haram in the city of Jos and other areas in northern Nigeria. The cycle of poems began when poet Laura M Kaminski (who…
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But I’m Not Really Sick Unless I’m Depressed!
I was trying to explain to my mom how confusing illness is when you’re bipolar. Last week I was diagnosed with bronchitis, and this week we’ve added reactive mono and mycoplasma pneumonia (a mild form of pneumonia). And all this time I really haven’t thought I’ve been that sick. Sure, I’ve been super-tired. Sure, I’m…
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David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green and the Precocious Jason Taylor
I just finished Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (author of Cloud Atlas—which was a Man Booker Prize finalist—and Number9Dream among others). It’s a coming of age story, recounting one year in the life of thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, who lives in a small village—Black Swan Green—in Worcestershire in 1982. Cold War England. I came away…
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No more BIG projects in 2015
Has a creative project ever mattered so much to you that you simply did…nothing? Or next to nothing in its pursuit? Has it ever mattered so much that what you did in every other creative area in your life—and maybe even every other area in your life in general—didn’t register as “counting” for anything at…
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Stigma, Story, and Solidarity
Several years ago, when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I didn’t mind sharing my story with others. I was struggling with horrible symptoms, due in no small part to being prescribed the wrong meds, and I sought community–both for encouragement and to encourage others. I was a grad student in a department very…
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End of the Year issue of Creative Thresholds ROCKS!
The last issue of CT for the year–and the last issue before going to a twice-monthly format–ROCKED! Michael Dickins explores the blunting of awareness and empathy by our mass media in Michael Dickins: PreOccupied. J. Adam McGalliard works the layers of reality in “Projections“: “The projected image works as a double-edged sword. It can starkly…
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The Latest Creative Thresholds
Photography, flash fiction, experimental writing, critique, and iPad drawings: the latest Creative Thresholds. Go behind the scenes of photographer J. Christopher Matyjasik’s latest project: dixie’s s-bahn. See the continuation of Daniel Boscaljon’s and my collaboration in confession: the nature of my crime. Read our new columnist Christopher Hutchinson’s look at Rashid Johnson’s work in Postcolonial Thoughts: Afrofuturist Rashid…
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Creative Thresholds
Last year, in between my first and second surgery for thyroid cancer (I ended up having three), I came up with the idea of having a magazine-style blog called Creative Thresholds where I shared some of my work but also showcased some of my super-talented friends’ work. That was about 7 months ago and the…
Melissa D. Johnston Art 