A JCPL librarian interviews published writers about their favorite writing prompts. These exercises can help inspire, focus, and improve your creative writing.
Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, a novelist, essayist, or poet, you’ll find motivation to keep writing.
Brought to you in partnership with the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.
Listen to Episode 46
Poet Leatha Kendrick believes that creativity is a habit. “To exercise your creativity is to keep it active and alive,” she says. “You have to get up and walk to the library and then something can happen.”
Exercise your creativity with Leatha’s favorite writing prompt. It will help you turn off your conscious mind and remember forgotten details. Listen below!
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About Leatha Kendrick
Author of five poetry collections, Leatha Kendrick received Transylvania University’s 2025 Judy Gaines Young Award, recognizing exceptional works by Appalachian authors.
Leatha grew up on a southern Kentucky farm. Her adult life was spent in eastern Kentucky where she and her husband raised three daughters.
Kendrick began writing seriously in midlife and found her first community of writers at the Appalachian Writers Workshop. She received her MFA in Poetry (at the age of 45) from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Recent poems and essays appear in anthologies such as Troublesome Rising: A Thousand-Year Flood in Eastern Kentucky and in journals including Appalachian Journal, Still: The Journal, and Hood of Bone Review.