Willingness (A Writer's Meditations on Crossing the Flood)

Willingness: A Writer’ s Meditations on Crossing the Flood invites wonder, inspires joy, and encourages artists of all kinds to embrace the enigmas that fuel creativity. A posthumous collection drawn from legendary author and mentor Kevin “ Mc” McIlvoy’ s four decades of teaching, lecturing, and editing, Willingness is a testament to his “ process of searching” for truth: the “ dark and luminous beauty” that pulses at the deepest heart of human experience— and authentic art. The only nonfiction book among his ten published works of fiction and poetry, Willingness was in process at the time of Mc’ s sudden death in 2022. His wife, the writer Christine Hale, completed it by arranging excerpts from lectures, notes, handouts, essays, and interviews. Mc’ s colleagues and students recognized in him a strange genius; Willingness offers readers— those meeting him here for the first time and long-time followers longing to reconnect— the associative, recursive, branching-rather-than-arriving, mind-expanding experience of hearing him speak. “ A gift,” from the capacious heart and mind of McIlvoy, writes Peter Turchi in his introduction, Willingness is a book not on how to write but how to keep writing.