Is creativity a therapeutic, culturally enriching and health-giving pursuit, or is it an outpouring of darkly unconscious, neurotically dangerous material? What have been some of the important modern influences on our assumptions and ideas about creativity?

Using a fascinatingly varied but beautifully controlled blend of approaches, Kevin Brophy places the creative writer and artist within a modern history of arguments over questions of creativity. He discusses creativity as a social-cultural practice, presenting creativity as a historical, political and inevitably compromised practice which must always be in dispute.

In a world where creative writing is becoming institutionalised through university courses, he argues for the importance of continuing instability, theoretical sophistication and unsettled differences over what creativity is.