Gloria Steinem was born in 1934, the daughter of a traveling salesman and the granddaughter of activist Pauline Steinem. Pauline was chairwoman to the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education. She was also known to have rescued several German family members from the Holocaust. Now herself recognized as a prominent American feminist, activist, and journalist, Gloria was inspired by stories of her grandmother, but also by the experiences of her mother, who was mentally ill, and who suffered from a “nervous breakdown.” As an adult, Gloria described caring for her mother and experiences with dismissive doctors as having been key to her understanding of injustice toward women.

Because of her father’s itinerant vocation, she traveled often and did not attend school regularly until she was eleven years old. Steinem eventually attended Smith College and, afterward, received a fellowship to study in India, where she was influenced by Gandhi’s approach to activism. Upon returning to the United States, Gloria worked as a freelance writer for publications like Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and The New York Times magazine. For one of her most famous early articles, Steinem went undercover as a scantily clad waitress (or a “bunny”, as they were called) at New York City’s Playboy Club. Published in Show magazine, the piece exposed the sexism rampant in Playboy and male-dominated social circles. In 1968, she helped create New York magazine and wrote a recurring political column for the publication. Her articles, including those on abortion, a radical feminist group called the Redstockings, and essays like “After Black Power, Women’s Liberation,” reflected her growing feminist views. She campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1971, she joined 300 other women, including prominent female leaders like Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan, and Myrlie Evers-Williams to form the still-active National Women’s Political Caucus, which works to advance pro-equality candidates in elected and appointed offices at the state and national level.

Image credit: Makers

In 1972, Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, where she worked as an editor for fifteen years. The magazine began as an insert in New York magazine and it shortly grew into its own publication. She pushed for the magazine to join and be published by the Feminist Majority Foundation and still serves as a consulting editor. There were times when Steinem’s position in the feminist movement was challenged because she portrayed a glamorous image, though she was undeterred by the criticisms. In 1972, Gloria also became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club.

In 1986 and at 50 years old, she publicly battled breast cancer but saw it as a sign that she should focus her activism where it was sincerely needed—in order to prevent burnout. You would hardly know, as that same year she published a book about Marilyn Monroe called Marilyn: Norma Jean. This is one of many books that Steinem has written, with others including My Life on the Road, Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, and Moving Beyond Words: Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender. Her writing also appears in anthologies and textbooks, and she was an editor of Houghton Mifflin’s The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History.

Image credit: School of Visual Arts

Steinem worked with Robin Morgan and Jane Fonda to found the Women’s Media Center in 2004, which works “to make women visible and powerful in the media.” She also co-founded Voters for Choice, a pro-choice political action committee, and serves on the board of URGE, a national organization that fosters young pro-choice leadership and promotes responsible sex education in schools. Steinem also began the Ms. Foundation for Women, which works on grassroots programs that empower women and girls and she founded “Take Our Daughters to Work Day”, a tradition that has spread across the world.

Throughout her often controversial career, Gloria has remained steadfast in the idea of equal rights for women. As she told the New York Daily News, “We’ve demonstrated that women can do what men do, but not yet that men can do what women do. That’s why most women have two jobs—one inside the home and one outside it—which is impossible. The truth is that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.”

Gloria Steinem has been the subject of both books and documentaries, including HBO’s “Gloria: In Her Own Words”, the PBS documentary series, “MAKERS”, and the biography, The Education of a Woman. In the book, Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Have Shaped Our Times, she said, ”I think the fact that I’ve become a symbol for the women’s movement is somewhat accidental. A woman member of Congress, for example, might be identified as a member of Congress; it doesn’t mean she’s any less of a feminist but she’s identified by her nearest male analog. Well, I don’t have a male analog so the press has to identify me with the movement. I suppose I could be referred to as a journalist, but because Ms. is part of a movement and not just a typical magazine, I’m more likely to be identified with the movement. There’s no other slot to put me in.”

Image credit: Time

Throughout the years, Steinem has been the recipient of an impressive number of awards, including the Clarion Award, Equality Now’s International Human Rights Award, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Liberty Award, the National Gay Rights Advocate Award, the Penney-Missouri Journalism Award, the United Nations’ Ceres Medal and Society of Writers Award. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2014, Rutgers University created the Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair, which funds teaching and research for an individual –man or woman—who exemplifies Steinem’s values of equal representation in media.

Gloria was an honorary co-chair and speaker for the Women’s March on Washington in 2017 and is a current advisor to TIME’S UP, a movement against sexual harassment. For all of these reasons, we consider Gloria Steinem one of #thosewhoinspire.

Lead image credit: Encylopedia Britannica 

Even in today’s relatively progressive world, female journalists often face discrimination or are corralled into writing or producing material that is meant to appeal to the so-called feminine point-of-view. As we recently highlighted, there are those like Christiane Amanpour who have worked hard to challenge the status quo. But for every Amanpour, there is another young woman likely being pushed toward producing pieces about beauty, the home, or entertainment news—subjects supposedly geared toward a feminine audience. Amid persistent sexism in media, we can look to nineteenth-century journalist Nellie Bly, who became both a popular and respected voice of her time and a strong role model in investigative news.

Nellie was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Pennsylvania in 1864. She got her unofficial start as a writer by responding to a column in the Pittsburgh Dispatch column titled, “What Girls Are Good For,” which suggested that women were suited only for housekeeping and having children. She answered the article under the pseudonym “Lonely Orphan Girl”, openly challenging its misogynistic message. Cochran eventually revealed her identity to the newspaper’s editor, who offered “Lonely Orphan Girl” the chance to write more about female-centric issues like divorce and working women. She was eventually offered a permanent position and, as was the custom at the time, she was assigned a pen name: Nellie Bly.

Like most women writers of the time, she was primarily assigned columns focusing on the home, children, fashion, and society—but she quickly became restless in this role. Nellie pushed her editor for freedom and began writing on more pressing societal issues like challenges facing the poor, women’s status in society, conditions in local factories, and other similar topics. Though Bly’s articles were popular, the newspaper began to receive pushback from local businesses who threatened to pull advertisements from the paper unless the stories stopped. Discouraged, Nellie traveled to Mexico as a foreign news correspondent for the paper, reporting on the lives of everyday Mexicans and the Mexican government. She once again found herself mired in controversy, this time over her criticism of the government. Bly had to flee the country, but her writings on the subject were published as a book called Six Months in Mexico.

Once back in the states, Nellie moved to New York City and struggled to make her way as a professional journalist. Nearly destitute after four months, she talked her way into a column at Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, The New York World. The paper’s editor was intrigued by her proposed story—an undercover exposé on the poor living conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island. Bly managed to get herself committed to the asylum and was immediately subject to the horrific conditions therein. Bly apparently was so convincing in her feigned insanity that other patients refused to room with her. The facility held a staggering 1,600 patients, most of whom were subjected to “treatments” like ice baths, wore threadbare garments, lived in vermin-infested quarters, and ate rancid food. She wrote, “What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment?”

Bly’s writings centered not only on the cruelty of the facility and its doctors but also on the humanity of its patients. She witnessed that a number of them were not mentally ill at all; they just lacked the ability to speak for themselves in court or spoke little to no English. After a few days, Nellie revealed that her “crazy” persona was a ruse, but The New York World ultimately had to send an attorney to have her released from the facility. Days later, the newspaper began running Nellie’s writings on the asylum in installments called “Behind Asylum Bars” and they became a sensation. Her stories were syndicated in newspapers across the country. Her investigative journalism spurred examinations into the treatment (and mistreatment) of the mentally ill and prompted a grand jury investigation that resulted in overhauls to the asylum’s practices. Bly’s installments were compiled into a book, titled Ten Days in a Mad-House.

Nellie Bly continued to go undercover, writing about unwanted babies by pretending to be an unwed mother trying to sell her child, exposing corrupt government officials by attempting to bribe a crooked lobbyist, and secretly posing as a poverty-stricken factory worker to uncover poor working conditions.

In 1889, she began a more lighthearted assignment, attempting to make a trip around the world, inspired by Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. At the time, women were considered too much trouble to take on long journeys, as it was assumed they would require constant chaperoning and lots of luggage. To combat this stereotype, Nellie set off on her journey with no escort and only the most essential items. Heading east from New York, she journeyed to England, Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. The New York World held a popular contest, challenging readers to guess her arrival date. Early telegraph cables allowed Bly to send short travel updates to her editors. Nellie traveled by steamship and rail and faced setbacks, like rough ocean weather, that delayed her travel time. After landing in San Francisco, she boarded a train that brought her home to New York. Seventy-two days, six hours, and eleven minutes after her departure, Bly arrived at her original starting point—handily beating Verne’s fictional eighty days. After her journey, Nellie toured the world giving lectures and wrote Nellie Bly’s Book: Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. Not long after, she was back on the beat writing articles about police corruption, labor strikes, and women’s suffrage.

At age 31, Bly retired from journalism when she married 73-year-old millionaire Robert Seaman. She helped manage his company, Iron Clad Manufacturing, which made milk cans, barrels, and garbage cans. Nellie even patented a milk can and stacking garbage can during her time there. When Robert died in 1904 and the company eventually went bankrupt, Nellie returned to journalism. She traveled to Austria during World War I and acted as a war correspondent for five years. Eventually returning to New York, she wrote an advice column, worked for women’s suffrage, and aided widows and poor families. She wrote until her death in 1922 at age 57, from pneumonia.

Nellie Bly did not let her gender define the course of her career. Through her actions, she proved that women were capable of great and captivating journalism. She broke barriers by showing that women should not be relegated to lifestyle and society columns and put her life on the line for a good story. Though women still fight not to be pigeonholed in the media and in all professions, Nellie Bly stands as a model of someone who challenged gender roles and succeeded. This is why she is one of our #womenwhoinspire.

Margaret Bourke-White, born in the Bronx in 1904, was one of the earliest prominent female photographers – working for a number of notable publications, primarily LIFE magazine. Though she studied photography in college, she was uninterested in pursuing it as a profession until long out of school. Eventually, she formed her own company, with Otis Steel Company among her first clients. Through this work, she proved both her worth as a female photographer and her skill at capturing detail through the lens. Accordingly, she began to attract national attention.

Bourke-White was hired in 1929 as a staff photographer for Fortune magazine, allowing her up-close access to the financial collapse that ultimately became The Great Depression. In 1936 she was hired by publishing magnate Henry Luce as LIFE Magazine’s first female photographer. One of her earliest assignments was covering the construction of the Fort Peck Dam, a Public Works Administration project in Montana. Her photo negatives, arriving at the LIFE office just 24 hours before the first issue’s publication, made the cover—published on November 23, 1936. The issue sold out immediately and within months the magazine’s circulation more than tripled. The cover photo was selected by the United States Postal Service to represent the 1930s in its series, “Celebrate the Century.”

Image Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

During the mid-thirties, Bourke-White also traveled the American Dust Bowl, photographing those living through the national disaster. The photos became a book, You Have Seen Their Faces, that explored the humanity of those suffering in the Dust Bowl and during the depression.

In 1941, Margaret toured Europe and the Soviet Union as what we believe to be the first female war correspondent. She is alleged to be the only Western photographer in Moscow during the German raids on the Kremlin, where she captured Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s portrait. She and her fellow journalists are said to have ushered Russian citizens to safety—all while taking the only photographs of the attack, including a shot of the Kremlin, lit by bombs exploding around it. Over the course of the war, Bourke-White was embedded with the U.S. Army and Air Force in North Africa, Italy, and Germany, coming under heavy fire in each location.

While in Europe, Bourke-White traveled throughout Germany with American General George S. Patton and, through her lens, documented untold atrocities. She captured images of brutal work camps, Nazi officials and their families, dead from suicides, and the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, including survivors and the furnaces where so many Jews were burned. She kept secret the fact that her father was Jewish and later admitted that she used her camera lens to create a barrier between herself and what she was witnessing.

Margaret also requested permission to cover the North African campaign, where she traveled by ship. The boat was struck by a torpedo and sunk. Bourke-White salvaged only one of her cameras and captured images of other survivors on lifeboats. Between this and her experiences in Europe, she became known at LIFE as “Maggie the Indestructible.” She was also the subject of an Army “pin-up” poster, the photo for which was captured after she flew on a B-17 bombing raid. Her photos of the raid would run in LIFE magazine, and pictures of Margaret dressed in flying gear made her perhaps the most clothed military pin-up of all time.

Image Credit: Time Magazine

After an entire career as a conflict photographer, Bourke-White traveled into Pakistan in the late 1940s to cover the battles between India and Pakistan and the Indian freedom movement. She recorded horrors that were unlike any she had seen since photographing concentration camps. After the war, she spent a great deal of time documenting the life of Mohandas Gandhi. One of her most famous images was that of Gandhi at his spinning wheel, taken in 1946. According to documents from the International Photography Hall of Fame, there were two conditions for photographing him: do not speak to him, as it was his day of silence, and do not use artificial light. Due to the dim light in his hut, she convinced them to allow her three flashbulbs. According to Bourke-White, “I was grateful that he would not speak to me, for I could see it would take all the attention I had to overcome the halation from the wretched window just over his head. He started to spin, beautifully, rhythmically and with a fine nimble hand…When Gandhi made a most beautiful movement as he drew the thread, I pushed the trigger and was reassured by the sound that everything had worked properly.” She also interviewed and photographed Gandhi a few hours before his 1948 assassination.

Image Credit: Time Magazine

After India, Margaret’s next assignment was to cover the Korean War. It was there, in 1953, where she began to notice symptoms of what she would learn was Parkinson’s disease. Within four years, she found herself unable to continue working and eventually retired from LIFE in 1969. Bourke-White endured multiple treatments and two brain surgeries in an attempt to combat her illness; she was able to successfully end her tremors but her speech was permanently affected. During this time, she wrote her autobiography, Portrait of Myself and continued to lecture. Over the course of her lifetime, Bourke-White would write eleven books.

Bourke-White died in 1971 at age 67, from Parkinson’s disease. She is quoted as saying, “Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject.” For her immeasurable skill and ability to find the humanity in the most difficult circumstances, Margaret White-Bourke is one of our #womenwhoinspire.

Lead image credit: Time Magazine

The newsroom has traditionally been a “boys’ club”—and we are just beginning to see a shift in this mindset, both on cable and network news. For decades, Christiane Amanpour has been challenging that norm as a prominent news correspondent and a leader and role model for women (and all journalists) all over the world.

Growing up in both Tehran and England as the daughter of a Muslim from Iran and a Christian from the United Kingdom, she is fluent in both English and Farsi. Her family left Iran due to tensions between Iran and Iraq, which heavily impacted her father’s business. The dual perspective provided by these circumstances of her adolescence has likely been a foundation of the open point-of-view Amanpour brings to her news work and the empathy she offers in her programming.

Image Credit: Financial Tribune

Amanpour made her debut on the national news scene in 1983 at CNN and three years later was working as a producer-correspondent in their New York offices. By the late 1980s, she was sent to Europe, covering the fall of communism and the rise of democracy. She became more prominent as a television reporter during the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s, covering the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the later United States involvement. From there Christiane moved to Iraq, reporting on the Kurdish revolt and then to Bosnia and Herzegovina – a move that put her in American living rooms on a regular basis. It is widely believed that her reporting on the conflict made our citizens more actively informed and aware of the atrocities occurring. Amanpour was sometimes criticized for her passionate editorials on and bias surrounding the conflict. But, as she told the Guardian, “There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn’t mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.”

Christiane’s experience in conflict reporting has found her covering crises in Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestinian territories, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans, and she reported from Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina. Amanpour has also obtained interviews with world leaders that other reporters could not. She famously interviewed Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat live via telephone during the siege on his Ramallah compound in 2002, and the leader angrily hung up on her. She was the sole journalist reporting from the courtroom during Saddam Hussein’s 2004 trial and the last reporter to officially interview Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi before he was overthrown and killed in 2011. She also secured the only interview with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak during the Arab Spring.

Image Credit: Time

Currently, Amanpour works for two networks – an incredibly unique arrangement. She serves as global affairs anchor for ABC News and provides international commentary and analysis for their other news programs. She is also the chief international correspondent for CNN International and her show “Amanpour” permanently filled the spot vacated by Charlie Rose, who faces sexual harassment allegations.

Recently, Amanpour created a CNN documentary series called “Sex and Love Around the World,” seeking to examine cultural approaches to sex, love, relationships, and marriage. The series of composed of six episodes, each helmed by a female director. “I wanted to know how many women and girls understand that they have a right to their own happiness,” Amanpour told Variety. “It doesn’t happen in so many parts of the world for so many reasons — culturally, legally, religiously. Now I’m finding that this is changing and young women are becoming the agents of their own happiness. They’re investigating the full extent of what it means to be a human being.”

Image Credit: Politico

Amanpour has received virtually every journalistic award possible, including nine Emmy Awards, two George Polk Awards, the Courage in Journalism Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and multiple George Foster Peabody Awards. She is a commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire and an honorary citizen of Sarajevo. Christiane is also on the board of directors for the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Women’s Media Foundation, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and has served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for freedom of expression and journalist safety. Amanpour continues to delve into new and difficult subjects and is a world leader in international journalism. For this and many reasons, Christiane Amanpour is one of our #womenwhoinspire.

Lead image credit: The New York Times

Tanzila Khan was born in Sialkot, Pakistan, and a physical disability has confined her to a wheelchair since birth. Her activism began early in her life, as she was on the receiving end of discriminatory practices. In Pakistan, those with disabilities are often relegated to a lower status and their needs and desires are rarely taken into account. When she was sixteen, Tanzila wrote her first book, A Story of Mexico, and has since published her second book, a novel titled The Perfect Situation. The profits from both books have funded disaster relief for victims of the Pakistani earthquake, for disability awareness, and female empowerment.

She faced discrimination in school, as she was not allowed to participate in theater, social activities, and philanthropic clubs. “I think earlier when I was in my school, it was the identity that I was given and that was the girl on a wheelchair. And during that part [of my life] I realized that this doesn’t sound right to me, it sounds too hopeless, it sounds too upsetting and sad—not just for me but for the person who is addressing me either. This whole circle of sadness didn’t appeal to me that much. So, I thought that I have to change this identity. So at that time, I considered myself, I looked at myself and said to myself that what do you have, what can you do? And the only things that I had were my hands, so I had to use my hands. So, deliberately I pushed myself towards reading and writing.”

According to Tanzila, her primary motivation is the simple joy of being alive. She feels that she has a great responsibility to impact the youth of Pakistan, focusing not only on disability rights but also access to education and resources. She has partnered with the British Council, Global Changemakers, and Oxfam to further the reach of her causes. Tanzila has also used her platform to press the Pakistani government for wheelchair accessibility in all government buildings. She describes herself as a “soft-skills trainer” for development and the corporate sector and is an international motivational speaker.

Photo Credit: Pak101.com

Tanzila believes that her college experiences helped her crystallize her focus on disability rights. In her TEDx talk, she explains, “I wasn’t allowed to take part in any activity because the faculty feared that I might face some physical obstacle. They had their fears, while I had my own: someone was killing the spirit inside of me… And then again, again, again, I was not allowed to be part of many activities. Again there came a point where I decided to break the line. I declared, ‘Fine—you can have your own events, you can have your own theater, you can do whatever you like; I’ll have my own… It took me quite a while to realize that my cause, my passion, my subject was inside me, was with me all this time, and it took me so long to get there. This is the reason I was created.”

At that moment she began to formulate the idea of her own production company called Creative Alley, which now trains and empowers the community through events and projects. It provides the youth of Pakistan and across the world a platform to share artistic works. The group’s primary initiative is a “youth capacity-building workshop” taught by Tanzila called Let’s Get M.A.D. (Make a Difference). “Creative Alley is a platform for everyone and anyone out there who has the talent, who has the skills, but who didn’t get the chance.” It acts as a springboard, encouraging and assisting individuals with disabilities to exhibit and distribute their work across the world.

Photo Credit: Tanzilakhan.com

In her work as a speaker, she advises, “Leadership involves initiatives. So in whatever walk of life you are currently in, take an initiative. Because in later years, initiative will define your identity.

Lead image courtesy of Be Bold People.

Did you know that (per the Indian Law Resource Center) more than 4 out of 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than 50% have experienced sexual violence? Were you aware that, according to the Center for Disease Control, the third-leading cause of death for Native American and Alaska Native women aged 10-24, is murder? Twenty-five-year-old Calina Lawrence knows and her mission is to speak the truth of Native women until the world understands the scope of this problem – one that goes largely unaddressed in the justice system.

For 40 years, United States law has made it nearly impossible for Indian nations to prosecute non-Natives, who reportedly commit about 88% of violent crimes against Native women on tribal lands. In the 1978 Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, the court determined that tribal courts do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-indigenous people, and so they may not punish them without authorization from Congress. Non-Native individuals compose over 75% of the population on tribal lands and federal and state authorities decline to prosecute nearly 70% of matters occurring on tribal lands that are referred to them. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 updated some of these issues, giving tribes jurisdiction over “domestic violence, dating violence and violations of protective orders that occur on their lands,” but violence has not decreased.

Photo credit: The University of San Francisco

As an enrolled member of the Suquamish Tribe, Lawrence was raised in the Pacific Northwest within her indigenous culture. She graduated from the University of San Francisco with degrees in performing arts and social justice and, since graduating, has become a leader in pushing for awareness in violence against native women, advocating for Native Treaty Rights, and has been an active participant in the “Mni Wiconi” (Water is Life) movement led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Lawrence strongly believes that there is a strong connection between the violence against Native people and the violence against Native lands. She said, “The violence against women is synonymous with the environmental injustice that we have been facing… And until we can really sit down and continue conversations that address that reality for the most marginalized, the most vulnerable, which, in my experience, [are] Native American women and LGBTQ and children…we have a real shot at redefining our humanity and redefining how we exist and coexist with Mother Earth.”

Awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women was first brought to light in Canada when the true nature of government-mandated boarding schools was made public. These school systems and their near-identical counterparts in the United States were created for the sole purpose of assimilating Native children into “white” culture. Students were forced to move long distances from their families, prohibited from speaking their native languages, were exposed to diseases like tuberculosis and flu, as well as physical and sexual abuse. In Canada, at least 6,000 students are estimated to have died while at these boarding schools; there is no true number of those who perished in America. The larger legacy of these institutions has been a created culture of violence, post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide within indigenous communities in the Americas.

According to Calina, “This [has] been ongoing since colonial invasion. It’s been ongoing since the boarding school eras, where they stripped our children from families and abused them in religious boarding schools. Those things have been inherited. The patriarchal violence that we’ve been on the receiving end still very much exists today. And so, there’s a lot of work that’s happening, not only around collecting these stories and this information but really working in the community to shift our psychological approach, to start to ask the comfortable questions and to hold more folks accountable as to what contributes to our dehumanization.”

Referring to water, land, and animals as “non-human relatives”, she works to aid all at-risk elements of violence against Native peoples. She considers herself an “art-ivist”; a talented singer, Calina has released a number of singles since her college graduation, most relating to Native issues and featuring other indigenous artists. She is scheduled to release her first full album this year.

Photo credit: The San Francisco Foghorn

When it was announced that the “Times Up” campaign, which was created to fight sexual harassment, assault, and inequality for women in all industries, would participate in the 2018 Golden Globes, many advocate attendees opted to bring notable activists as their companions. Lawrence attended with actress Shailene Woodley – whom she met when both were protesting at Standing Rock. The indigenous activist said, “As an indigenous woman from Washington state, and on behalf of missing and murdered indigenous women and those who commit their lifetime and effort to finding justice for us, we stand in solidarity with the Time’s Up movement and this initiative to create healing and empowerment across the world. It’s an honor to be a part and to celebrate and to speak truth.”

Lead image credit: The University of San Francisco

In the late 1950s, Jane Goodall visited Kenya at the urging of a friend, not knowing that her life’s work lay just ahead. She fostered a love for all animals since early childhood and, while there, summoned the courage to reach out to famous anthropologist Louis Leakey, whose fossil discoveries documented that modern man’s origins lay in Africa. Then-curator of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi, Leakey initially hired Goodall as a secretary—but was looking for someone to dedicate time to the study of chimpanzees in the wild, for the purposes of the study of evolution. Chimpanzees, the world’s second-most intelligent primate, had not yet been successfully observed in the wild, nor their behaviors cataloged. Though Goodall had no college degree, Leakey determined that she was the woman for the job and sent her to study with famed primatologists in London; she then moved to the Gombe National Park in Tanzania, a move that directly determined the remainder of her life’s work.

When Jane walked into the forests of Gombe, neither she nor the rest of the world had a strong understanding of chimpanzees or their close genetic ties to modern man. Because she was not formally trained in traditional research methods, Goodall approached her study in an unorthodox way, working to immerse herself in the chimpanzee habitat and studying their day-to-day behaviors up close, rather than as a distant observer. Instead of numbering her chimp subjects, she named them and observed their individual personality traits. This practice has continually called into question her objectivity in studying her subjects.

Image Credit: G Adventures

Goodall’s studies uncovered information that was unknown to that point: that chimpanzees have a complex social system, their own form of language, they go to war, use touch and comfort to bond, and are not vegetarian. She has been credited as the first person to observe chimpanzees making and using tools, a trait previously attributed only to humans. Supposedly, Goodall witnessed a male chimpanzee strip the leaves from a twig, insert it into a termite nest, and use it as a spoon to collect his meal. She said, “It was hard for me to believe. At that time, it was thought that humans, and only humans, used and made tools. I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker—yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.” Her findings were the first to suggest that there was a closer relationship between humans and chimps than ever seen before.

In order to bolster her scientific credentials, Leakey sent Goodall to Cambridge University, where she earned a Ph.D. in ethology. This provided her a level of credibility in a community of scientists who were highly critical of the practice of anthropomorphizing animal subjects. “These people were trying to make ethology a hard science,” Goodall told The Guardian. “So they objected—quite unpleasantly—to me naming my subjects and for suggesting that they had personalities, minds, and feelings. I didn’t care.” She did concede one important point: “The brain of a chimp and the brain of a human are not that different anatomically. But we [humans] started to talk to each other and that drove the brain—because there were more and more things that we could do with it. Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do—like tool-making and abstraction and generalization. They can learn a language—sign language and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child.”

Image Credit: Variety

In 1977, Goodall founded the Jane Goodall Institute, which houses most of Jane’s research and continues the work she began in Gombe; it has dozens of offices around the world. She is the face and driving force behind efforts to protect chimpanzees and their natural habitat. She has also written a number of books, including In the Shadow of Man, a study of chimpanzees, Through a Window, which discusses problems associated with keeping chimps in captivity, and The Chimpanzee Family Book, which is geared toward children. Goodall was also the subject of “Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees”, a television program that demonstrated Jane’s work with primates and conservation. The film “Jane” combined footage from the television series with modern-day interviews to give a full view of Goodall’s work with chimps.

Image Credit: National Geographic

Jane has accomplished something remarkable: attracting more women to the field of research, particularly primate studies—an area that was almost completely filled with men when Goodall began her work. She has also directed attention to the impact of deforestation and the destruction of the habitats of wild animals and works actively to educate local communities and to improve their quality of life. According to the Jane Goodall Institute, more than one million chimpanzees lived in Africa a hundred years ago, while today that number could be as low as 200,000.

Image Credit: Stuff.co

Though in her eighties, Jane Goodall still travels widely as an advocate of chimpanzees and their environment. She is a board member for “Save the Chimps”, the largest chimpanzee sanctuary outside of Africa, serves on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project, and is a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Goodall has received many honors, including the Gold Medal of Conservation from the San Diego Zoological Society, the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize, the Schweitzer Medal of the Animal Welfare Institute, the National Geographic Society Centennial Award, and the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences. She has also been named a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.

#womenwhoinspire

Lead image credit of The Jane Goodall Institute.

Photograph © Condé Nast: “Rachel Carson, Washington, D.C., 1951” by Irving Penn

Rachel Carson’s childhood was spent in a smoky suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, far from the seas and oceans that would one day capture her heart. Her home was near the local glue factory, where she would watch slaughtered horses fed by conveyor belt into an oven; the smell was so rancid that families rarely went outside in the evenings. Without realizing it, she was learning about the impact that companies and chemicals had on animals—even the human animal.

Once she was old enough, Rachel attended the Pennsylvania College for Women, then studied at the oceanographic institute and Woods Hole Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, before receiving her master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University. A gifted writer and scientist, she was made editor-in-chief for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s publications. Her first book, Under the Sea Wind, written in 1941, told the story of fish and seabirds written in a clear, narrative style. In 1951, she published The Sea Around Us, which was essentially the biographical story of the sea. The book became a best seller and won a U.S. National Book Award. The Edge of the Sea, another bestseller, described the ecosystems of the entire American east coast. She was beginning to address issues that, while at the time were uncommon discussion points, are now critical worldwide issues: climate change, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and dwindling animal populations.

These books prepared her for the arduous research and writing of what would become her seminal work, Silent Spring, published in 1962. It was serialized in The New Yorker, making its way into the homes of average Americans—not just to the desks of scientists and academics. Carson also made an appearance on “CBS Reports” that brought her message into our living rooms. The book primarily focuses on the effect of chemicals on Earth’s ecosystems, but also speaks to their effects on humans, in the form of cancer. The book warns of the dangers resulting from misuse of pesticides, particularly DDT. Through this work, she questioned whether man had a right to manipulate and control nature. She accused chemical companies of intentionally spreading misinformation and public officials of believing those claims without questioning them.

“Our Ever-Changing Shore” from Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, 1999

Using tactics that are now commonplace, chemical companies attacked Carson personally—launching publicity campaigns to discredit her science, calling her a Communist sympathizer, accusing her of colluding with the Soviet Union to cause massive crop shortages, and deriding her as a crazy cat lady. Biographer Linda Lear described their characterizations: “She was an alarmist, they claimed… Even a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture was known to wonder in public ‘why a spinster with no children was so interested in genetics.’ Her unpardonable offense was that she had overstepped her place as a woman.” Even today there are those who believe that banning DDT caused massive outbreaks of malaria in Africa due to a rise in the mosquito population. This conflict marked the beginning of environmental issues as a partisan issue.

Less than a year after Silent Spring was published, Rachel Carson—secretly dying of breast cancer—testified before the Senate about the effects of pesticides on the environment. “Our heedless and destructive acts enter into the vast cycles of the earth and, in time, return to bring hazard to ourselves.” She lived long enough to see her book become a success, selling over a million copies before her death in April 1964. President John F. Kennedy instructed a science advisory committee to investigate Carson’s claims. Their report eventually vindicated her, finding that overuse of pesticides was causing a buildup of poison in our food chain. However, it took a decade and two subsequent presidents to officially ban the production of DDT in America.

“Rachel Carson at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, 1950.” Photo credit: Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives, Connecticut College

Since the publication of Silent Spring, the environment has become a more divisive issue than ever. As a society, we have chosen not to heed many of Carson’s still-relevant warnings. “Chemical war is never won and all life is caught in its violent crossfire,” she wrote. Today, we see honeybees dying by the hundreds of thousands, and more and more fish and wild game being wiped out by chemicals and lack of stewardship. Leading environmentalist Jonathon Porritt said, “I think she would have been horrified about the state of the planet today. Silent Spring outlined a clear and important message: that everything in nature is related to everything else. Yet we have not taken that idea on board or fully appreciated its significance. In that sense, we have let her down.”

Lost Wood: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson

Still, Rachel Carson’s work remains relevant, is cited as an influence on conservational organizations across the world, and was influential in the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson is considered by many to be the mother of the modern environmental movement. Silent Spring has now sold over two million copies and Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980, by President Jimmy Carter. It remains up to us to heed her message and work toward a cleaner Earth, led by an educated population.

P.S.: Read “The Ocean and the Meaning of Life” from The Marginalian here.

#thosewhoinspire

“Rachel Carson examining a specimen” by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Photo credit: The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

“All black art is political. I think our very presence is political. Anyone that is able to establish a voice and a consistent presence and put their voice forth is doing something radical and political with their very presence.” – Ava DuVernay

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay was born in 1972 in Long Beach, California, and raised in Lynwood—just outside of Compton. She grew up surrounded by the violence that permeated that time and place, but also in a space where art and activism lived. Her mother Darlene was an educator and activist and her Aunt Denise, who she constantly references as a major influence in her life, reinforced the idea that art was important. DuVernay explains that her aunt worked at night so she could “pursue her passion during the day, which was art and literature and theater…. She worked to live. But what she loved in life was the arts. She was fed by it. That was a huge influence on me.” Both her mother and her aunt made sure Ava knew that you could make an impact through the arts.

DuVernay majored in English and African-America Studies at UCLA and, remarkably, did not pick up a movie camera to produce her own work until she was 32 years old. Prior to that time, she spent years working in film publicity and marketing. After years of watching other directors work, she began releasing short films before writing and directing I Will Follow in 2010. Middle of Nowhere followed shortly thereafter in 2012. At that year’s Sundance Film Festival, she won the U.S. Directing Award: Dramatic – the first African-American woman to do so.

Photo Credit: Digital Trends

Her next major film was Selma, a biopic on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—the first ever presented on the big screen. Selma was an important historical drama, but it was also a personal project for DuVernay; her beloved step-father was an Alabama native and she would visit his childhood home on summer vacations. As a child, he watched the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers pass and his memories informed her experience making the film. The movie was both controversial and acclaimed, but it was undeniably powerful. DuVernay became the first African-American female director nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Director and was the first black female director to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The film’s lack of nominations in other categories—and the absence of diversity in the moviemaking industry—contributed to the #OscarsSoWhite movement.

As the movement picked up steam, DuVernay became a strong voice, challenging the entire industry to evaluate its representation (or lack of representation) of people of color. She told Time Magazine, “If the person who gets to tell the story is always one kind of person, if the dominant images that we see throughout our lifetimes, our mothers’ lifetimes, our grandmothers’ lifetimes, have been dominated by one kind of person, and we take that? We internalize it. We drink it in, as true, as fact. The images in our minds that make up our memories are all told by one kind of person, one kind of background. It shouldn’t be this way. That is a deficit to us. A deficit to the culture… For anyone who is working in a house that was not built for them, at times it is not particularly welcoming… So, it’s about making sure we push against tokenism and vain attempts at diversity and push for different points of view to be centered, valued, and seen.”

Photo Credit: The New York Times

In 2016, DuVernay directed and co-wrote 13th, a documentary about the Thirteenth Amendment and how race, the American justice system, and mass incarceration have devastated the African-American community. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Outstanding Documentary. Currently, she is wrapping up Disney’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time and is the first black woman to direct a movie with a $100 million budget. Her movies inspired a race equivalent to the Bechdel Test (for women in film) called the DuVernay Test, which asks if films feature minorities with fully realized lives, who are not simply scenery in white stories.

In 2010, Ava founded AFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement), her own distribution company meant to focus on films made by and/or focusing on black people. In 2015, she rebranded the company under the name ARRAY to focus on bringing attention to films by both women and people of color, worldwide. She also owns Forward Movement, a film and television production company. Recently, she partnered with Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, to launch a diversity program to fund internships in the entertainment industry for young people in underserved communities.

Photo Credit: The Huffington Post

DuVernay has earned the right to be selective in what films she makes and how. She is known for her care in creating inclusive environments on her film sets—recognizing every member of her cast and crew, from the marquee star to the key grip. But she acknowledges her privilege at this point in her career and the pathway that other, less renowned, black female filmmakers helped pave for her. DuVernay is and will remain dedicated to showcasing varied voices and images in cinema, further clearing the pathway for new voices in global media.

#womenartists
#thosewhoinspire

Lead Photo Credit: Super Soul

“What does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?” – Sophie Scholl

These were the words of Sophie Scholl, a 21-year old leader of an Anti-Nazi rebellion movement in the 1940s. Sophie, her brother Hans, and their friend Christoph Probst, were executed by Nazi party officials in 1943, as a result of their distribution of a revolutionary leaflet called The White Rose. Their actions helped spur an undercurrent of revolt across Germany, throughout World War II.

Photo Credit: Speigel Online

Like many of the changemakers we have written about, the Scholl children were the products of politically aware parents. Their father, Robert Scholl, warned his children that Hitler was a dangerous man whose actions could lead to the destruction of Germany. But like most teenagers of the time, Hans and Sophie followed their peers and joined the Hitler Youth—beginning their indoctrination of the superiority of the German nation. In 1942, their father was arrested and spent time in a Nazi prison for speaking out against Hitler himself. He was quoted as saying, “This Hitler is God’s scourge on mankind, and if the war doesn’t end soon the Russians will be sitting in Berlin.” And so the Scholl children began to understand that the things they’d been taught in Nazi youth organizations might not be morally correct.

Because of their father’s arrest, Sophie and Hans knew that open dissent against the Nazi party was a dangerous enterprise. The government moved from more quiet deportation of Jews to concentration camps, to violent and overt conflict across the nation. In 1942, Sophie was attending the University of Munich and found an anti-Nazi pamphlet in class, which after some detective work she discovered was the work of her brother and some friends who’d formed an anonymous resistance campaign. Despite pleas from her brother, she decided immediately to join the group.

Inspired by the non-violent resistance tactics of American civil rights activists, the students began publishing anonymous pamphlets they distributed across central Germany. The first leaflet of The White Rose group (so named for the symbol of purity in the face of evil) appeared at the University of Munich and included an essay explaining how the Nazi regime was imprisoning and murdering entire groups of German citizens. At the bottom of the flyer were the words, “Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.” Its appearance caused an immediate stir on campus since dissent against the government was almost unheard of. “We will not be silent,” wrote The White Rose. “We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”

Photo Credit: Sportsocratic

The second pamphlet described the murder of 300,000 Polish Jews; the third leaflet called for destruction of arms plants, government-supported media, and public political meetings. Rumors, dissent, and more leaflets spread rapidly among students, and Nazi agents frantically began a search for the authors. Citizens began receiving, duplicating, and distributing the flyers in communities across Germany. The White Rose group also took to the streets, painting graffiti across the city of Munich, saying “Down with Hitler!” and “Freiheit!”—Freedom. They wanted to create the impression that The White Rose was a major revolutionary group. Before being caught, the group published six pamphlets in less than a year.

In February of 1943, the group was apprehended when leaving pamphlets in suitcases all across the University of Munich. Sophie took to a balcony that overlooked a courtyard and scattered reams of flyers as students exited classes. Her action was witnessed by the school’s janitor, who reported Sophie and Hans to the Gestapo. After being interrogated for nearly 24 hours, Sophie emerged from questioning with a broken leg but a steely spirit. She was quoted as saying, “I’ll make no bargain with the Nazis.”

The students’ hearing began a mere four days after their arrest and, because all pled guilty, they were not allowed to testify. Still, Sophie did not sit quietly throughout the proceedings. She interrupted the judge throughout, with statements like: “Somebody had to make a start! What we said and wrote are what many people are thinking. They just don’t dare say it out loud!” and “You know the war is lost. Why don’t you have the courage to face it?”

She was allowed one official statement: “Time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicting world, we have to adapt to it. Oddly, this completely un-Christian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians, of all people. How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up to a righteous cause? I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences.” She and her fellow defendants were sentenced to death by execution, which was carried out within hours of the decision. On the back of Sophie’s indictment, she wrote the word “Freedom”. Her reported last words were, “Die Sonne scheint noch”—”The sun still shines.”

Photo Credit: Spartacus Online

At least 14 members of The White Rose organization (reportedly numbered around 30) were executed. More than 5,000 people were beheaded or sent to concentration camps during the height of the Nazi regime. Today, the story of The White Rose is known throughout Germany—which, as a country, has made a commitment to reconciliation and remembrance. There is a square at the University of Munich named for Hans and Sophie Scholl and there are streets, schools, and buildings across the country named for the Scholls and other members of The White Rose.

There have been moments in the last decades, even in the last couple of years, when the question has been asked: “Will you be on the right side of history?” Sophie Scholl knew that she had the opportunity to use her voice in a dangerous time, and she knew which side of history she wanted to be on.

Champion of women’s suffrage, Emmeline Pankhurst was born in 1858 in Manchester, England, to radical politically active parents. When she was 14 years old, they opened her eyes to women who were fighting for the right to vote – a cause she immediately took up and advocated for the rest of her life.

When Emmeline was 21, she married Dr. Richard Pankhurst, a liberal barrister 24 years her senior. He was also a prominent supporter of women’s rights and a friend and colleague of John Stuart Mill, who authored the first women’s suffrage bill in Great Britain in the late 1860s. Emmeline’s husband encouraged her to continue with her efforts in challenging what they both considered to be the oppressive status quo. He was her partner in founding the Women’s Franchise League which in 1894 secured the right for married women to vote in local elections, though not for members of the House of Commons.

Photo Credit: Manchester Evening News

After Richard’s death, Emmeline founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (ESPU), who were the first activists to be labeled “suffragettes”. The members were known for their militant and sometimes violent approach to activism. “Deeds not words” was Pankhurst’s approach to change, a distinct departure from the peaceful protests that women had previously used. These policies led the ESPU to sometimes act with violence and extremism, including bombings, arson, window smashings, and violence against police. Women would chain themselves to buildings and railings to protest inequality. The group’s tactics were not without fatalities. In 1913, union member Emily Davison threw herself under the king’s horse at the Derby in protest of the government’s failure to give women the vote.

Photo Credit: The Daily Mirror

Early on, members of the ESPU were expelled from a Liberal Party meeting for loudly demanding the members make a statement on votes for women. The women were arrested for assaulting police and, as the group would continue to do in the future, refused to pay bail and opted to go to prison instead. Emmeline was arrested over a dozen times, often staging hunger strikes which the government attempted to thwart by violently force feeing her. Police began using a “cat and mouse” tactic wherein they would release a hunger-striking prisoner, then re-arrest them once they were healthy. Objecting to the group’s violence and militancy, some members began to drift away from the union, including some members of Pankhurst’s family.

In 1914, Pankhurst temporarily set aside her suffrage efforts, devoting time and energy to Britain’s participation in World War I. She encouraged women to take industrial jobs to aid in wartime efforts – jobs usually given to men. An estimated 2 million women entered the workforce during the war. Proving they could do the work as efficiently as men, these women’s efforts did a great deal to change the perception of women in Britain’s society.

Photo Credit: Washington State University

The Representation of the People Act of 1918 granted voting rights to women over the age of 30, though men 21 and over had the right to vote. The WSPU reinvented itself into what became known as the Women’s Party, which worked toward women’s equity in society. In 1926, Pankhurst was nominated as the Conservative candidate for an East London region, but was unsuccessful in her attempt, as her health began to fail before the election. Emmeline passed away just two weeks before women were awarded the same rights to vote as men. Though considered by many to be a revolutionary to the end, The New York Herald Tribune described Pankhurst as “the most remarkable political and social agitator of the 20^th century and the supreme protagonist of the campaign for the electoral enfranchisement of women.” In 1996 Time named Pankhurst one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20^th Century, stating that “she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back.” There are plans for an 8-foot bronze statue in Britain’s Manchester city center, the first statue of a woman to be erected in the city in more than a century.

Pankhurst was quoted as saying, “We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half,” a motto she promoted until the end of her life.

In the years since we met Rosanne Cash, we have grown from giddy fans, to dedicated admirers, to proud and honored friends. It is no secret how much we are inspired by Rosanne—as a supporter, an artist, and a beautiful person. We’ve done our best to express our admiration whenever the opportunity arises. We are still awestruck that we know someone so talented, so prolific, and so wise.

It has been a joy to see Rosanne and her singular creativity be acknowledged by so many, lately. Her album, The River and the Thread, which will always hold a special place in our hearts, won 3 Grammy Awards in February 2015, sweeping all categories for which it was nominated: Best Americana Album, Best American Roots Song, and Best American Roots Performance, for “A Feather’s Not a Bird”.

She has recently held a three-night residency at the Library of Congress, received the 2014 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for the Performing Arts, and curated a “Perspectives” series for Carnegie Hall that highlighted the best in Americana and roots music. (Among the artists included were Alabama Chanin favorites and Alabama natives, St. Paul and the Broken Bones.) Earlier this year, Rose was named the Country Music Hall of Fame’s 2015 Artist in Residence, which culminated in three concerts, including one instantly legendary evening of music by Rosanne, Lucinda Williams, and Emmylou Harris.

In October, Rosanne was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, an honor she was thrilled to receive. “This is the award I wanted. I started as a songwriter. I still consider myself, first and foremost, a songwriter, and dreamed that one day I would get this honor.” She and her father Johnny Cash are the only father/daughter members.

Rosanne seems to be always searching her own depths and looking for new sources of inspiration. She has recorded 15 albums and writes prolifically—everything from essays and fiction (in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and the Oxford American—among others) to her moving memoir, Composed. On top of all that, she also wrote three songs for season two of HBO’s True Detective and collaborated with Elvis Costello and Kris Kristofferson on a song released alongside Costello’s brand new memoir.

It is only natural that we would look to someone like Rosanne as part of our exploration of the creative process. We know that her method and her products are substantive, and we trusted that she would be completely, brutally honest with us. I recently read a quote of hers that I could relate to completely: “It’s only amateurs who only work when inspired. Music is a more trustworthy way to God than religion.” It is with this in mind that we consider Rosanne’s responses to our questions on creativity.

Alabama Chanin: Do you have any creative rituals?

Rosanne Cash: Before performances I have several things I do—stretching, breathing, feeling my feet on the ground, mentally clearing the space around me, a few words I always say to myself. In writing—no rituals, although I do have devices to break the constraints. Sometimes just a cup of tea will set things right.

AC: What makes you curious?

RC: Singularity makes me very curious. If someone is the foremost expert on wooden boats in the world, or knows everything about a certain brain tumor or a rare butterfly or deeply understands something that I only vaguely comprehend, like quantum physics or Mormonism, then I am riveted. I want to inhale everything they can tell me. And I’m curious about the personality that lives for one thing.

Dilettantes bore me.

My curiosity is also aroused by artists I love, but I don’t want to know about their artistic process. If I am moved by someone’s work, I want to know what they like to eat for breakfast, how much sleep they get, what their rituals are, if they watch television, their beverage of choice… I would KILL to know what Shakespeare did for amusement, who he slept with, and what his favorite food was.

AC: What do you daydream about?

RC: I daydream about color, water, silence, and nature.

Sometimes I daydream about how I would re-upholster my furniture.

AC: How important is education to your creative process?

RC: It’s important. I would use ‘discipline’ and ‘education’ together. It drives me crazy when people think what I do comes ‘naturally’ and that I don’t have to put effort into writing or performing or recording, or that songs happen because you get hit by a thunderbolt of inspiration and that’s all there is to it.

There are a lot of musicians and songwriters more talented than me. 85% of my success is because I’m tenacious and I show up for work.

AC: Do you have processes or tricks to spur creativity?

RC: Listening to music and looking at art inspires me. If I’m really stuck, I put on certain records to jiggle the door open, or go to a museum. If I hear a really good song, my competitive side might get triggered and I want to write something better.

AC: Do you have to be in a certain mood in order to create?

RC: That’s what amateurs do. If I only worked when I was in the mood, this would be a hobby, not my profession.

AC: Nature or nurture? Do you imagine creativity is part of human nature or must it be learned?

RC: Creativity is part of human nature. Mastery of creative work must be learned by doing.

AC: Creativity for me is_____.

RC: the reason I’m on the planet.

AC: How do you define success?

RC: Doing what you love and making a living at it.

AC: What parts of your work seem the “heaviest” and the “lightest”?

RC: The travel for performance is the ‘heaviest’. I get really, really tired of it. I love travel, in theory, but touring is brutal.

The ‘lightest’ is when I finish writing a song that I know is good.

AC: Does spirituality play a role in your creativity?

RC: Creativity IS spirituality.

AC: What makes you nervous?

RC: Doing things outside my wheelhouse. I’m about to perform with Wynton Marsalis for the first time. That makes me a little nervous. Those kinds of things.

AC: In what ways would you want to change your imaginative spirit?

RC: I’d want to make it bigger.

AC: Is there something that can halt your creativity? Distractions, fears, etc.? Have you found a way to avoid those pitfalls?

RC: Anxiety over my kids stops the whole circus.

AC: Have you ever censored your imagination or creativity because you don’t want to offend anyone? If so, how?

RC: No. There were things I didn’t put in my memoir because I didn’t want to hurt someone, but that’s different.

AC: If you had to start over, would you choose a different path in your career?

RC: Nope.

AC: If you were no longer able to use the medium that you are now working in, how else would you express your creativity?

RC: I’d love to paint.

AC: Do you critique your own work?

RC: Excessively.

AC: Has rejection ever affected your creative process?

RC: It made me try harder. I’ve been depressed and felt insecure about certain failures and rejections, but it never made me give up.

AC: Who do you define as a visionary?

RC: Someone who marries two very disparate ideas to create something entirely new, like Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the musical ‘Hamilton’.

AC: What last made you think, “I wish I had thought of that!”

RC: The musical ‘Hamilton’.

AC: If you were to become a professor, what classes would you teach?

RC: Songwriting.

AC: What are your favorite things to do? What do you distinctly NOT like to do?

RC: I don’t like to unload the dishwasher.
I don’t like taking makeup off.
I don’t like to spend the day doing email.
I love reading.
I love putting the kettle on and anticipating tea time.
I love to sew with my girlfriends.

AC: Is there one single act that can open your imaginary mind?

RC: I wish I knew.

AC: Are there parts of your life that you always make a priority? That you struggle to make a priority?

RC: I always make my kids a priority.

I struggle to make doing nothing a priority.

(This project is made possible in-part by a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts)

Photos courtesy of Clay Patrick McBride, Abraham Rowe, and Robert Rausch.