There’s a new website in town for those of you interested in imaginary worlds and worldplay. Especially for those of you who would like to share your imaginary world with others like you–no matter what age. Check out mysecretcountry.org, the brainchild of Marlo McKenzie, a filmmaker right now working on a documentary about paracosm play. […]
Maybe you don’t know yet about Humans of New York? In the summer of 2010 a photographer named Brandon began taking photos of random people on the street and asking them questions, collecting quotes, short stories and snippets of information to post along with the photographs on his site, http://www.humansofnewyork.com. Not too long ago he […]
Last month I had the great good fun of talking with cognitive psychologist, blogger and podcaster Scott Barry Kaufmann about my book, Inventing Imaginary Worlds: From Childhood Play to Adult Creativity Across the Arts and Sciences. Scott is currently Scientific Director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, […]
My book, Inventing Imaginary Worlds, includes a “Childhood Worldplay List” of sixty or so individuals, ranging from Charlotte Brontë to MacArthur Fellow Laura Otis. As I indicate there, “I fully expect additional examples to come to light.” Here I suggest that Tomas Tranströmer, Nobel laureate in Literature (2011), also engaged in complex imaginative play that […]
The poet Galway Kinnell died this month. Among other honors and recognitions, Kinnell received a MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1984. As a MacArthur Fellow he responded to my query concerning the invention of imaginary worlds. He also granted me a phone interview, during which we talked at length about his childhood worldplay: “I had three […]
A review of Keri Smith. The Imaginary World of _____ (Your Name Here). A Perigee Book/Penguin Group, New York: 2014. I never thought I would pull a Lady Catherine de Bourgh. In Pride and Prejudice Mr. Darcy’s imperious aunt declares her love of music with the words: “If I had ever learnt, I should have […]
Imagine my surprise the other day when I opened the weekly newletter from the Center for Childhood Creativity. Inventing Imaginary Worlds gets a great review from Helen Hadani, Ph.D., Associate Director of Research at CCC, a program of the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, California.
Just about the time I handed Inventing Imaginary Worlds over to my publishers, I happened to walk past a store display that stopped me in my tracks. I was in Oxford, England, visiting my daughter Meredith. My book had taken its first inspiration from Meredith’s worldplay in childhood; now she worked as a postdoc on […]
When I began my research into worldplay (aka paracosm play) over ten years ago there was very little current research to draw on. But things have begun to change. I like to think my early articles on the subject had something to do with that. Certainly I found some early interest and support among academic […]
I recently spoke with Lidia Rozmus, graphic designer, sumi-e artist and haiku poet, about her adult invention of an imaginary world. “Let There Be a Little Country”: A Conversation with Lidia Rozmus was published in the spring/summer 2014 issue (37.2) of Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America. Follow the link here for […]
Inventing Imaginary Worlds 