The Artist Academic by Patricia Leavy

Patricia Leavy, PhD is novelist, sociologist, and arts advocate (formerly Associate Professor of Sociology, Founding Director of Gender Studies and Chairperson of Sociology & Criminology at Stonehill College). She is widely considered the world's most visible proponent of arts-based research, which merges the arts and sciences. Patricia has published over 50 books, nonfiction and fiction, and her work has been translated into numerous languages. She has received over 100 book awards. She has also received career awards from the New England Sociological Association, the American Creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the National Art Education Association. In 2016 Mogul, a global women’s empowerment network, named her an “Influencer.” In 2018, she was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the State University of New York at New Paltz established the “Patricia Leavy Award for Art and Social Justice.” In recent years, her passion has turned to penning romance novels.

What inspired you to write The Artist Academic, and how does it reflect your own experiences as both a scholar and an artist?
The question I’m most frequently asked is: “How did you do it?” The question can mean slightly different things. How did you go from academic to commercial novelist? How did you develop an audience in two worlds? How did you find success as a free agent? I tend to think people are really asking: How did you build the career and life you wanted, and how might I do the same? I wrote this book as an attempt to answer that question. In the book, I talk about my experiences as both an academic and as a novelist, reviewing the “messy gut checks” that led to “turning points” which ultimately enabled me to build the life I wanted to live.

Were there pivotal moments in your academic career that made you realize the need to merge scholarship with creativity?
I had what was considered an enviable academic career—early tenure, promotion, a long cv filled with publications—and yet I felt unfulfilled. It didn’t seem like my work mattered beyond my own job security. This persistent nagging feeling spurred many moments when I questioned the traditional system of producing academic scholarship. The reality is that most academic scholarship is completely inaccessible to the public. It circulates in expensive, jargon-filled, highly specialized academic journals which are housed in universities. Journal articles are poorly read within the academy too. For the most part, no one wants to read this stuff. Yet a lot of academic scholarship is centered on interesting topics that people care about. So I felt there had to be a different way to do and share this work for those of us who wish to speak to the many, not the few. I started dabbling with creative approaches to research, such as using poetry and literary writing. I never looked back.

How did your early experiences in academia shape the perspective you share in this book?
We live in a world in which we compare our insides to others’ outsides. For example, social media is generally people’s highlight reels. It’s not a reflection of the totality of their lives. Yet we can look at the good things happening to someone else or their pretty pictures and compare it to our own lives, often feeling badly, like we don’t measure up. The same thing can be true in our professional lives. Our careers may look enviable to the outside, but on the inside, we may be unfulfilled. So, I wanted to pull the curtain back. The truth is that in many ways I had a wonderful early career in academia and that’s certainly how it looked on paper. But it’s the difference between looking good and feeling good. I wanted to show people that even if something looks good to everyone else, if it doesn’t feel good to you, it’s okay to make a change. In the end, there’s nothing better than finding your true calling and living your purpose.

Can you describe a moment when you felt tension between the expectations of academia and your artistic ambitions?
When I first began writing novels, I was working with academic publishers. I positioned my work as “social fiction”—fiction grounded in scholarly concerns. The publishers I worked with wanted all kinds of supplemental material to accompany each novel. For example prefaces and afterwords where the process and citations were made clear, discussion questions linking the novel to social science themes, and so on. Some even wanted long subtitles listing the “academic” themes in the novels, although I successfully resisted that demand. There came a time when my novels started to be read more outside the academy. General readers hated the “extra” material. They did not want to be told what to think about a novel they were reading. I knew they were right. Academics are taught to detail every aspect of their research, including their process and how they’re influenced by others. Art doesn’t work the same way. Novels should not have footnotes. You need to let the art stand on its own and allow people to interpret it as they will. 

What were the biggest obstacles you faced in balancing your scholarly work with creative projects, and how did you overcome them?
Often in life, we are our own biggest obstacle, and this was true for me. First, I needed to let go of fears about what people might think and the rejection and criticism I might face. The truth is if there’s no critique it doesn’t mean work was well received, it more likely means it wasn’t received at all. Any work that finds an audience beyond our immediate friends and peers will face some criticism. That’s part of the process. I needed to stop trying to please everyone. It’s a losing battle anyway. So I worked on my own mindset, got clear about the intentions behind my work, and stopped making compromises to make it more palatable to others.

How have gender or institutional biases influenced your journey, and how do you address these challenges in your book?
Like many, I’ve dealt with biases and other roadblocks in both the academy and the publishing industry. Learning to navigate those obstacles, and sometimes bad players, has been an important part of my story so I didn’t shy away from recounting a few examples. These weren’t fun experiences, and neither was writing about them, but I felt it would be a disservice to readers to exclude some of these harsh realities. My hope is that by sharing my experiences it prevents others from having to do the same, and at a minimum gives them some tools and strategies if they do face these challenges. It’s also important that people know they are not alone. I’ve had bad experiences and still found success and personal happiness. Others can do the same.

Did writing The Artist Academic uncover any unexpected insights about yourself or your career path?
Absolutely. Writing is always a great way to reflect and connect the dots. There are things we don’t really notice when they happen because they don’t seem that remarkable, but in hindsight we can see their significance. For example, I never really thought about how many people in my early life set me on a path. My maternal grandmother who made up magical stories, my high school friends who loved to talk about philosophy, the artists I met in graduate school. There are some people, books, and films I always remembered as major influences, but really, there were many more and they played a bigger role than I realized. I also noticed how many times in my career something that felt like a horrible setback led to something much better. During the lived experience, it didn’t always feel that way, but in writing the book I could see how each step back led to many forward. That was a happy surprise.

For scholars who feel “stuck” in traditional academic roles, what first steps would you recommend to start embracing their creative side?
Try experimenting, without expectations. Take interview research and try to write a poem. Take ethnographic research and write a short story. Just begin where you are with whatever you have. There are writing activities at the end of The Artist Academic that are a great place to start. One is to write a letter to yourself about your career as it is and as you wish it to be. Get honest. What do you really want your career to look and feel like? What would it take to get there? The suggestions at the end of the book are designed to help you identify “messy gut checks” in your own career, which inevitably put you on the path to turning points.

How can academics create space for creativity while meeting institutional demands and deadlines?
It’s always challenging balancing the demands on our time. I’m a huge believer in creating a writing discipline (or artistic discipline). Carve out specific time in your schedule for creativity—whether that’s daily, a couple times a week, or whatever works. No scrolling, emails, etc. during that time. Use every minute of it—even if that’s staring at a blank screen and thinking. Consider that time sacred. If you had a meeting with someone else you would show up. Show up for yourself. Don’t break promises to yourself.

You discuss building a public creative voice—what strategies or practices do you suggest for those new to this process?
Learning to write for or speak to different audiences is a great skill. I suggest starting by writing a blog or op-ed. You don’t need to publish it. It’s practice for learning how to take your ideas and share them with a public audience. I spent a lot of time on this, and it really paid off in more ways than I could have imagined. Doing a practice interview is another strategy. If you have a creative work such as a novel, play, or collection of visual art, or a literary nonfiction project such as a memoir, write down some interview questions someone might ask you about the work and answer them. It’s a great way to get comfortable speaking about your work in public, and again, there’s no pressure, it’s just for practice. 

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Purchase the book here: 
 https://www.amazon.com/Artist-Academic-Literary-Scholar/dp/1737862441/