Beech River Books

Dan Wakefield is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter who grew up in Indianapolis and graduated from Columbia College in New York City. His book, Returning: A Spiritual Journey, was described by Bill Moyers as “one of the most important memoirs of the spirit I’ve ever read.” His books The Story of Your Life: Writing a Spiritual Autobiography and Creating from the Spirit:?A Path to Creative Power in Art and Life grew out of workshops he leads at churches, synagogues, adult education centers, health spas and retreat centers throughout the country. His memoir How Do We Know When It’s God? continues the story of his spiritual quest.

His novels Going All the Way and Starting Over were produced as feature films, and his memoir New York in the Fifties is the basis of a documentary of the same name, which was aired on the Sundance Channel and distributed as a DVD. Wakefield created and served as Story Consultant for the NBC prime time series “James at 15.”

He is the recipient of the Bernard DeVoto Fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, a National Endowment for the Arts award, a Rockefeller Foundation grant in Writing, and a Nieman Fellowship in Journalism at Harvard.

Wakefield served as Writer in Residence at Florida International University from 1994-2010, where he received the Faculty Award in Mentorship. He is currently on the faculty of the Low Residency MFA in Writing program at Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina and continues leading his writing workshops around the country.

To learn more or to contact the author, please visit his website: www.danwakefield.com.

Creating from the Spirit (Beech River Books, 2010) teaches anyone who wants to become more creative how to access our natural perceptions and hidden resources, a process brilliantly expressed in the lives and words of twenty “creators from the spirit.” Wakefield interviews artists and writers, scientists and athletes, CEOs and chefs — all of whom have learned to embrace each moment as a creative act. In this passionate, clearly reasoned book, award-winning journalist and novelist Dan Wakefield explodes the many myths often associated with the mysterious creative process. Drawing on examples from religion, philosophy, and literature and exercises such as journaling and right-brain drawing, Creating from the Spirit teaches us that the key to creation is clarity of body, mind, and spirit. Wakefield also challenges the “dangerous nirvanas” of drugs and alcohol as false agents of inspiration..