“Make this your worst draft.” That’s what Craig Childs will often say to students when they first sit down to write. “We’re creating stuff out of nowhere, so we’re lucky to get a word down on a page. We’re exploring options.” In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with the popular creative non-fiction author about his own unusual path to a writing career. Our conversation includes:
How to invite intuition and surprise into your writing,
How teaching writing changes and enhances our understanding of our own process,
How a thesaurus, used unconventionally, can be a great tool for when you’re stuck,
Creative ways to take words from a page and bring them to life,
And how a journaling practice helps inform a writing practice.
Craig will be a keynote speaker at the 2026 Grand Mesa Writers’s Symposium in Cedaredge on September 11-13.
CRAIG CHILDS is an explorer who brings tales of deserts and ice caps to the page. He has published more than a dozen critically acclaimed books, including The Secret Knowledge of Water, Atlas of a Lost World, Stone Desert, Virga & Bone, Tracing Time, and The Wild Dark. His books have won numerous honors including the Reading the West Book Award, Southwest Book of the Year, a Foreword INDIES medal, and the Orion Book Award. His nonfiction narratives and journalism have appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, High Country News, The New York Times, The Sun, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and Radiolab. He blogs at Last Word On Nothing. Childs lives in southwest Colorado.
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