The Dream Journal A New Kind of Hero’s Journey, Dream-Inspired Creativity with Author Donna Glee Williams
We all know that dreams can galvanize your creativity. Today we meet an author who has published three dream-inspired fantasy novels which seek to reimagine the hero’s journey. Author Donna Glee Williams, PhD is our guest and her latest book is called The Night Field. Plus music by Lynn Morgan Rosser.
Donna Glee describes her 17 year mentorship with Jeremy Taylor which began as an exploration of an ongoing dream theme of difficulty getting to water. She also speaks of dreams that are gifts for others and shares that she recently wrote a story based on another’s dream. When published it will have the dreamer as co-author.
She describes using dreams to inspire creativity by starting with the question, “If you were to do something to honor this dream, what would it be?” She then speaks about how her books embody a new kind of Hero’s Journey more appropriate for a post-patriarchal world than the traditional Joseph Campbell formulation, a new paradigm that gets away from individualism and invites co-heroes.
After the break we take a call from John of Santa Cruz who describes research showing that people who play music access different portions of their brain than those who don’t. Our engineer and music-creator Rick adds that music is a high-bandwidth form of transmitting nonverbal information.
We then take a call from Lynn Rosser of Asheville of North Carolina who has created music to go with Donna Glee’s new novel. We play part of the piece called Bridges. You can find Lynn at LynnMorganRosser.com and on Spotify and other platforms. Donna Glee suggests that listeners go to ko-fi.com/lynnmorganrosser to support her.
We then talking about using fantasy to address real-world issues including addressing problems with pesticides which are portrayed, but never explicitly mentioned, in The Night Field which emerged from her work with the Eco Tipping Points Project which can be found at EcoTippingPoints.org. Donna Glee ends by reading the opening paragraphs from her new novel.
BIO: When I first met Jeremy Taylor, I was already a writer but—other than my doctoral dissertation—I’d never written in any long form. During my 17 years of dreamwork with him, I wrote three novels seeded by dreams. His fingerprints are particularly bright on my latest, The Night Field.
Find our guest at: DonnaGleeWilliams.com, FB #DonnaGleeWilliams, IG: @donna.glee.7
Show aired on October 7, 2023.
Intro music is Water over Stones and outro music is Everything both by Mood Science. Ambient music is created new every week by Rick Kleffel. The audio can be found at Pandemiad.com. Many thanks to Rick Kleffel for also engineering the show and to Tony Russomano for answering the phones.
Contact Katherine Bell with feedback or suggestions for future shows at katherine@ksqd.org. Follow her on FB and IG @ExperientialDreamwork to find out about upcoming shows. To learn more or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her go to ExperientialDreamwork.com.
The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM. Catch it streaming LIVE at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific Time. Call or text with your dreams or questions at 831-900-577