LitMinds Book Club: Art Above Everything
September 9 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm CDT
Free
Join us as we read Art Above Everything by Stephanie Elizondo Griest.
A new kind of travel writing.
— Booklist
…a potent testament to the value of pursuing one’s passion.
— Publishers Weekly
A global exploration of what it means to choose a creative life.
All artists struggle. But women are especially pushed to give up their creative ambitions, from societal disapproval against “selfishness” to the pressure (or desire) for children and economic stability. Throughout her 20s and 30s, Stephanie Elizondo Griest wondered if constantly prioritizing her writing over everything else was leading her to fulfillment or regret. After a brutal break-up and narrowly surviving a health crisis in her early 40s, she turned to other women for their perspectives on that haunting question: is art enough?
Art Above Everything documents her travels to 10 nations—from Cuba to Iceland; Rwanda to Qatar—where she meets with legendary painters, poets, actors, dancers, and musicians who talk intimately about their art, both what it gifts them and what it costs them. Collectively, these artists speak dozens of languages and worship a spectrum of faiths, but their compulsions to create despite financial hardship, misogyny, sexual violence, and family ostracization are wholly akin. Bold and inspiring, Art Above Everything illuminates the ways we can wield creativity as a vitalizing force.
About the Author
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas/Mexico borderlands and the author of six books, including Around the Bloc, Mexican Enough, All the Agents and Saints, and Art Above Everything. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, VQR, The Believer, BBC, Orion, Lit Hub, and Oxford American, and has earned a Margolis Award, a PEN Southwest Book Award, an International Latino Book Award, and two Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism prizes.
She is currently Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. She has traveled to 50 countries and 49 states, is a cancer survivor now in remission, and recently endowed Testimonios Fronterizos, a research grant for borderlands student journalists at the University of Texas at Austin.
