"I think one thing that is not talked about enough is the importance of the arts and the importance of the humanities. And on the university level, the defunding of these sorts of programs and the kind of devaluing of that knowledge is an enormous loss. The arts are what tell us who we are. They're for the soul and they make being alive worthwhile. And the importance of making connections and finding a way to reach others and communicate and connect by trying to be honest and complicated and complex - because I truly believe that without those things, whatever future we can imagine for ourselves is going to be paltry. And it won't be imaginative. And without the humanities and the arts, it doesn't make me feel hopeful about the future."Madeleine Watts is an Australian writer based in New York. Her first novel The Inland Sea was published in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her essays and stories have been published in Harper’s Magazine, The Believer, The Guardian, The White Review, and The Paris Review Daily, among others. She teaches creative writing at Columbia University in New York. Her second novel, Elegy, Southwest, is forthcoming.www.madeleinewatts.comwww.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/667704/the-inland-sea-by-madeleine-wattswww.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast