Understanding Creativity

JANE PIIRTO is Trustees' Professor in the School of Education at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio, where she is the Director of Talent Development Education. She is a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and has her undergraduate degree in English from Northern Michigan University. She has an M.A. in English from Kent State University, an M.Ed. in counseling from South Dakota State University, and a Ph.D. in school leadership from Bowling Green State University.She has been a high school teacher, a counselor, a college instructor of humanities, a coordinator of programs for the talented, Principal of the Hunter College Elementary School, and an artist in the schools in Michigan, South Dakota, Ohio, and New York City. She has served as a consultant and speaker in Europe, the Near East, Southern Asia, South America, and throughout the United States. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Georgia.Her Understanding Those Who Create has been translated into Chinese. She has published over a hundred poems, short stories, and articles, and thirteen books and chapbooks, among them Talented Children and Adults (2 editions), Understanding Those Who Create (2 editions), "My Teeming Brain" Understanding Creative Writers, Luovuus, A Location in the Upper Peninsula (collected poems, stories, and essays), The Three-Week Trance Diet (novel), mamamama, Postcards from the Upper Peninsula, Between the Memory and the Experience, Silent Midnight Snow Comes Down, Journeys to Sacred Places (poetry chapbooks).She has received two Individual Artist Fellowships-one in fiction and one in poetry-from the Ohio Arts Council, and a grant from the Fulbright-Hays Foundation.She has two grown children and a granddaughter.

This reader-friendly book is used as a college textbook for courses in creativity. However, it is also interesting just as a nonfiction book with its sections on creativity, information about well-known creative individuals, and the different domains within creativity-artists, writers, musicians, scientists, mathematician, comedians, and more. Learn how the definition of creativity has changed through the years, and view the author's own depiction of creativity, called the "Piirto Pyramid of Creativity." Read about how Bill Gates embodied the classic traits of an underachieving gifted boy, how Van Gogh's artwork was brushed off by art galleries of his time, and how jazz extraordinaire Ella Fitzgerald was denied a job with a Harlem band because she didn't have the looks. The real-life examples described in this book will help parents and teachers learn to spot talent through children's behaviors and know how to encourage them so that their creativity can shine.