Throughout this collection of twenty-seven essays, Joyce Carol Oates demonstrates a critically incisive and feminist perspective on writers such as Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, and Emily Dickinson, and topics including Mike Tyson, Winslow Homer’s paintings, her travels in Budapest, creativity, and the politics of being a woman writer. Oates’s insights will motivate writers of all levels to seek inspiration in literature, art, and observations of contemporary culture.