Craft lives inside the artist, and it operates in the mind, not in standards or techniques. Creative writers navigate thresholds in consciousness as they develop their arts practice. Craft Consciousness and Artistic Practice in Creative Writing explores what it is to be an artist as it traces radical, feminist, and culturally embedded traditions in craft. The new term "craft consciousness" identifies the nexus from which writers explore making processes and practitioner knowledge. Writers, as with all artists, create and reimagine themselves anew, and it is in this perpetual state of becoming that they find ways to enlarge their sense of artistry through an exploration of forms, processes, and mediums beyond the written word. For writers, this book initiates a reexamination of the mission of creative writing through disrupting patriarchal, racist, colonialist, ableist, and capitalist associations with dominant craft. Drawing from twenty-five interviews with living artists outside of writing and in a host of fields from conceptual art to leatherwork and dance, the book shines a light on how the processes associated with craft are embodied. Craft is an internalized matrix; it need not be commodified for the marketplace or codified in the standards necessitated by institutions of higher education. By redesigning writing workshops and MFA/PhD programs through craft consciousness, new potentials and collaborations emerge, and it becomes more conceivable to imagine dynamic, inclusive relationships between writers, scientists, and other artists.

Telling a story is simple, right? You take a 'hero' and send them on a 'journey'. There's a beginning, middle and an end. But what if your story doesn't fit into that basic structure? In Beyond the Hero's Journey, BAFTA award-winning screenwriter Anthony Mullins champions one of the most powerful, yet most misunderstood, tools in a writer's toolkit - character arcs. Looking at celebrated films from around the world - including Moonlight, Lady Bird, The Social Network, The Godfather, A Fantastic Woman, Mulholland Drive, Shoplifters, Amour, Inside Llewyn Davis, Call Me By Your Name, Midsommar and The Father - he shows how character arcs not only create the 'emotional shape' of a story, but also offer writers of all levels an incredible variety of narratives that go far beyond the traditional, three-act Hero's Journey. For every writer who has ever felt frustrated by the neat confines of 'how to' guides, the book will teach you how to excel in telling more complex, original and authentic stories, and how to share your own distinctive voice with the world.