“There’s a lot of controversy about that idea at the moment, about whether fiction is truly empathic and how much freedom the imagination should have because, as one of my friends says, the imagination is not free. It comes from all of the places that we come from. So it’s a controversial notion, but I am firmly on the side of literature is empathic. In fact, I think that all the arts are empathic because all the arts basically say, ‘Wait a minute. Look at it this way.’ And they allow us to see from some other vantage point than our extremely self-interested selves.”Janet Burroway is the author of plays, poetry, esssays, children’s books, and nine novels including The Buzzards; Raw Silk, Opening Nights, Cutting Stone (all Notable Books of The New York Times Book Review), Bridge of Sand and Simone in Transit. Plays include Parts of Speech, Sweepstakes, Boomerang, and Medea With Child, which have received readings and productions in Chicago, New York, London, San Francisco, Hollywood, and various regional theatres; Her Writing Fiction, now in its tenth edition, is the most widely used creative writing text in America, and Imaginative Writing is in its fourth edition. She is author of a collection of essays, Embalming Mom and the memoir Losing Tim. Winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing from the Florida Humanities Council, she is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Florida State University. · janetburroway.com · www.creativeprocess.info