The Dream Journal A New Kind of Hero’s Journey with Donna Glee Williams
We all know that dreams can galvanize your creativity. Today in this replay of a popular show from almost two years ago, we speak with Donna Glee Williams, PhD, who has published three dream-inspired fantasy novels which seek to reimagine the hero’s journey. Her latest book is called The Night Field. We also play 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
This show, episode number 320, was aired on July 19, 2025 and was a replay from a show originally broadcast October 7, 2023 at KSQD.org, community radio of Santa Cruz.
Intro and outro music by Mood Science. Ambient music new every week by Rick Kleffel. Archived music can be found at Pandemiad.com.
The Santa Cruz Festival of Dreams is coming October 10-12, 2025! Mark your calendars now. Check our landing page at FestivalofDream.net and FB group page HERE or follow #KeepSantaCruzDreaming on FB and IG.
SHARE A DREAM FOR THE SHOW or a question or enquire about being a guest on the podcast by emailing Katherine Bell at katherine@ksqd.org. Follow on FB, IG, LI, & YT @ExperientialDreamwork #thedreamjournal. To learn more or to inquire about expl