In the interview (click here to listen), Donna Seaman, Editor-in-Chief of Booklist, discusses her memoir River of Books: A Life in Reading and her lifelong connection to literature. Seaman reflects on how books have served as both lifeboats and anchors throughout her life. She shares how reading, beginning with a large book of Chinese fairy tales in her childhood, helped her escape inner turmoil and discover new worlds.

Seaman recalls having a high school teacher who was a fiber artist. This teacher taught students how to spin and dye wool, set up looms, and weave. At the time, the Kansas City Art Institute was one of the few art schools that had a fiber department.

“As a New Yorker, of course, I thought I was going to Kansas,” she jokes. “I really don't think I ever heard of Missouri.”

She ended up in the Sculpture department based on the variety of materials available for use. She says, “I didn't really ever do a lot of traditional fiber work there. But it was a tremendous place to be. It was just a cauldron of creativity and angst and experiments and excitement.”

She also credits KCAI for her future success in literature—an association that might seem unexpected to an outsider. However, she directly connects it to the way her brain processes creativity.

“In fact, over the years, many art schools, including KCAI, have now had a creative writing department. That impulse to create, many artists who paint or sculpt, work in the [ceramics] department, they also read, they hear the language in their minds, their ideas are often expressed in a mix of the visual and language and story and poetry and music,” Seaman says.

“And you have to critique your work in art school, you have to be able to speak about what you're doing and why you're doing it. So language skills are immensely important,” she continues.

In the interview, Seaman shared her belief that a holistic education, which nurtures the whole person, prepares one for all aspects of life, not just desk work. While she acknowledges reading far more than most of her peers in school, she also spent countless hours in the studio.

She says, “I had all those stories in my head and based my reading and curiosity about things I was trying to express in other modes. So it's a very, very dynamic situation.”

Donna also reflects on the rivers and bodies of water that have been significant in her life, with Kansas City's Brush Creek representing an important symbol of her time there. The creek, though paved and often overlooked, became a place for her to wander, reflect, and explore. It is featured in her book River of Books: A Life in Reading.

“When you love the arts, there's always a sanctuary for you. You can always go to a museum, you can always open a book of photographs or paintings and feel that same escape that reading gives you into another realm, into someone else's interpretation of things that puzzle you,” she says.

“So I think it just continues to nurture me, and I love writing about art.”

Listen to the full interview here.