The Creativity Project ed. by Colby Sharp (review)

The process: editor Colby Sharp asked his forty-four favorite authors to submit two writing prompts in any form, and then sent two prompts back to each writer with instructions to come up with a short response to one of them. The result: everyone played along, with consistently fascinating, original, and well-crafted little gems of creativity. The prompts are all entertaining and evocative in their own right, with some specifying a word limit (Kate DiCamillo's, for example), some being quite wordy themselves (Gary D. Schmidt's), some offering examples (Sherman Alexie's and Minh Lê's), and some being pictures, either sketched or digitally composed (Javaka Steptoe's, Sophie Blackall's, and others). The responses were varied in form from short stories in prose, verse, comics to standalone poems and single art pieces that ranged in genres from humor to horror, wonder to wistfulness. The unused prompts are also included, but budding creators will be just as inspired to take the used ones in their own directions after reading what some of their favorite authors and illustrators have come up with. The short pieces will also send readers on a hunt for the writers' other work, their search facilitated by brief author bios collected at the end. This is a must-have resource for creative writing classes and clubs, or for anyone seeking to launch or hone their own imaginative capabilities. KC