The Act of Creation: Writing as Transformative Practice

Date and Time

• Fri, May 9, 2025 - Thu, Aug 14, 2025  9am - 6pm

Location

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Details

CSU Libraries Presents the Act of Creation: Writing as Transformative Practice
Fort Collins, CO – April 21, 2025 – Colorado State University Libraries, in collaboration with the Department of English, presents The Act of Creation: writing as a transformative practice. This exhibition, organized by Associate Professor Ramona Ausubel and curated by CSU Libraries Exhibition Coordinator Silvia Minguzzi, will be displayed in the Archives and Special Collections area on the second floor of the Morgan Library till Spring 2026. An Opening Reception will be held on Thursday, May 8th, from 5-6 pm.
FEAR: Trying to say something honest and reveal ourselves is scary. It is scary to face a blank page. It is scary to embark on a project that the artist does not yet understand. We create through fear and because of fear. Fear is always with us, but it does not have to stop us.
WONDER: The world is fantastically strange and beautiful. Creatures, plants, rocks, and stars surround us. Every day, every second, there are thousands of mundane or majestic happenings—bright green new aspen leaves shudder into the world, two people make eye contact across a crowded room, a fox finds a sunny spot, circles, and lies down. Art reminds us to stay awake to all of it.
PERSEVERANCE & FAITH: Art does not happen in a straight line. We begin in the dark and often stay there for a long time. Yet every failure could be considered a discovery, every incomplete draft as a field of opportunity. In the creation process, we must return and return and return and return.
“The Act of Creation: writing as a transformative practice. Leading a creative life is about being inspired by the strange, complicated, and marvelous world. It is also about habits, routines, and good, hard work. Making art requires facing fear and doubt, staying awake to wonder, and persevering through drafts, failures, and discoveries with effort and faith. The work is joyful, difficult, freeing, scary, magical, and mundane. The creation process changes us, and so is the world.” Ramona Ausubel.
Students in “Creative Writing as Transformative Practice” taught by Associate Professor Ramona Ausubel spent Spring Semester 2025 writing and thinking about the act of creation. The class explored the CSU Bug Zoo, the Biology Specimen Lab, the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, the Avenir Design Museum, and the CSU Libraries Archives and Special Collections. Anna Bernhard, Director of the Stanley G. Wold Resource Center, guided the students in a bookbinding project to gather their work together in beautiful objects that writers could hold and share. This exhibit brings together finished work, snippets from student sketchbooks and journals, and their thinking around the creative process.
Artists: SeAnn Angel, Emmy Bower, Elle DeWaard, Indigo Earthtree, Celia Feiszi, Kelly Hobbick, Neveah Janzen, Jordan Kennedy, Piper Lambert, Genie Logan, Alex Markusfeld, Kailey Mcclellan, Benan Moran, Ryan Offerman, Emma Pelto, Jack Raugewitz, Graydon Rogers, Hannah Rowton, Manuel Sanchez, Salem Sargent, Bella Stampa, Eden Walker, Audrey Weishaar.
The Department of English at Colorado State University is a dynamic community known for our devotion to teaching, interdisciplinary offerings, and excellence in research and the creative arts. We are home to poets, linguists, literacy researchers, teacher educators, novelists, literary scholars, rhetoricians, and composition specialists. Faculty and students study how people process and document the human experience.
The CSU Libraries serve as an intellectual and interdisciplinary hub for the CSU community and Colorado residents. We support students, researchers, and scholars across the university daily! Guided by the CSU Principles of Community, the Libraries provide resources, tools, and expert guidance to help users critically engage with the global information landscape. We prioritize offering information and services online whenever possible while maintaining two physical locations to support community engagement, individual reflection, and accessibility accommodations: Morgan Library and the Veterinary Teaching Hospital Library.

For more information about the exhibition, please visit lib.colostate.edu or contact Silvia Minguzzi at silvia.minguzzi@colostate.edu

This event is produced by an outside organization and is unaffiliated with the Downtown Development Authority. The DDA website serves as a marketing outlet for events and promotions occurring inside the Downtown boundary. For questions regarding the event, please contact the event producer.