A calm evening with interviews and portraits of creative women

For the evening when the house is quiet, the kitchen is tidy, and you want something steadier than the news. This is a hardcover collection of interviews with women who make things for a living, set beside photographs. It speaks plainly about hard years and about what came after, and it can be taken one short chapter at a time.

Wisdom of Wildly Creative Women is a hardcover of 256 pages from TMA Press, published March 28, 2023. Angela LoMenzo, who works as a creative director at a video and music production company and teaches meditation, interviewed women from many creative walks of life and wrote up their stories. According to Library Journal, the book gathers 25 of them. Each woman has a short chapter with photographs, so it reads as a portrait gallery as much as a book of interviews.

The women are artists, writers, designers, musicians, actors, photographers, hairdressers and makeup artists, and also people working in technology, podcasting and yoga, fields not always thought of as creative. The idea underneath is gentle: creativity is a way of living, not a job title. Many chapters cover difficult ground, including depression, bullying, infertility, cancer, assault, addiction and the death of loved ones. The Library Journal reviewer notes that these experiences are presented as fuel for ambition, alongside the therapies and the friends and family who helped. By that account the overall tone stays loving and supportive even where the subject is intense.

It suits a reader who is somewhere in the middle of a change, or who is wondering whether to begin something she has put off, such as a studio corner, a small business, a garden plan or a return to writing. It may also suit someone who wants company in a hard season without being told what to do. Sherry Richert Belul, founder of Simply Celebrate, recommends it for anyone needing extra bravery. Wendy Dio, a music manager and producer, says she related to the courage of these women. Anyone looking for exercises, worksheets or a method will not find them here. Library Journal says plainly that it is not a step by step manual.

As a read, it is easy to move through. The chapters are short, and the reviewer suggests the book can be taken in one or two sittings or savored slowly. Because it is a hardcover with photographs, it also works as a book to keep on a table or to give as a gift, which the description itself suggests. It won the 2024 National Indie Excellence Book Award. Whether the tone suits you is partly a matter of taste. The book is openly encouraging, and a reader who prefers cool, skeptical writing may find it too warm. This note rests on the description and the published reviews, not on any measurement.

What tends to stay after closing it is the plain point that these women began from very different places, and that each found a way to make something of her own. For a quiet hour with tea nearby, that is a calm and useful thing to carry into the next day.