Summer is the Time to Create Abundantly
We invite you to grow creatively this summer.
By Meghan Maguire Dahn
New research into cognition is beginning to show that time matters to thought. It’s showing us that we don’t just suffer from morning brain or mid-week fogginess, but that we think seasonally. This emphasis on seasonal cognition is even more prominent in locations situated closer to the two poles. Here, in the north, those seasonal changes affect us even more.
As the semester closes and the days lengthen, we wanted to share a bounty of approaches to creating abundantly this summer.
Summer is the perfect time to bring your practice into the daylight. Even urban green spaces have been shown to have a positive impact on replenishing attention.
Thinking about Lifestyle and Creative Practice
As we get more daylight this summer, you may want to take the opportunity to reboot your attention. Psychologists Ruth Ann Atchley and Paul Atchley write that “our modern society is filled with sudden events (sirens, horns, ringing phones, alarms, television, etc.) that hijack attention.” They continue that “by contrast, natural environments are associated with gentle, soft fascination, allowing the executive attentional system to replenish.” This summer, allow the replenishment driven by this “soft fascination” to energize your creative projects.
If you’d like to read more deeply about seasonal creativity, the following list is a place to start:
Jill Suttie - “Five Ways Hiking is Good for You”
Caoimhe Twohig-Bennett and Andy Jones - “The Health Benefits of the Great Outdoors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Greenspace Exposure and Health Outcomes”
Christelle Meyer, et al. - “Seasonality in Human Cognitive Brain Responses”
Jordana Kepelewicz - “Brain Activity for Attention and Memory Tasks Changes with Seasons”
Summer Reading Recs
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Summer Reading Recs 〰️
Maybe you just prefer fun summer reading. Here’s a list of books, new and old, across genres, that evoke summer.
Andre Aciman - Call Me by Your Name
Mandy Berman - Perennials
Wendell Berry - Our Only World
Italo Calvino - The Baron in the Trees
Tom Comitta - The Nature Book
Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
Mary Gabriel - Ninth Street Women
Garth Risk Hallberg - City on Fire
Thomas Halliday - Otherlands: A World in the Making
Patricia Highsmith - The Talented Mr. Ripley
Julia Holtz - The Connection Cure
Rowan Hooper - Togetherness: Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of the World’s Greatest Collaborations
Tove Jansson - The Summer Book
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson - Abundance
Sy Montgomery - The Soul of an Octopus
John Muir - My First Summer in the Sierra
Michael Nath - Talbot and the Fall: A Comedy (with Support)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oceanic
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein - The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie
Ali Smith - Summer
Maggie Smith - Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life
Patti Smith - Just Kids
Substantial collection of summer-related poems from the Poetry Foundation
Colson Whitehead - Sag Harbor
Prompts for Practice
Summer is ripe for your focus to bear fruit.
Looking to deepen your creative practice this summer? Try out any of these prompts!
In the summer our bodies of water swell. Use this as an opportunity to connect to one of the bodies of water on which you depend. Dear Body of Water is a crowd-sourced project that bridges the disciplines of poetry, education, geography, and ecology. After writing to a body of water (for ideas, you can look through the ample library of prompts on the DBW site), you can geotag your poem to a global map. Going somewhere on vacation this summer? You can find poems to the bodies of water near that place and familiarize yourself in advance!
How many of us let a thought unfurl alongside the Bronx River?
Morning Chorus:
Pick one day this summer to rise early and take part in the “morning chorus.” Birds are most vocal between 4:30 and 7:30 a.m. You can be too. Set an alarm. Pack a bag with your notebook, some pens, and a book that feeds your writing. If you’re not a morning person, maybe sleep in the clothes you’ll go out in. Roll out of bed, wash your face, brush your teeth and hair, and head outside. Find a place to sit (maybe in your yard, maybe on a bench, in a park?) and listen to the morning chorus. When you feel ready, begin to write. When the birds quiet down a bit, that’s your cue to go back inside. If you’re a morning person, carry on with your day. If you’re not, you’ve definitely earned a nap!
Write with the birds one morning and see what comes!
Summer Camp:
Research has shown that the concentrated, energetic environments of summer camps (particularly creative arts and project-based camps) have a positive impact on participants’ mental, emotional, social, and scholarly well-being. What if camp weren’t just for kids? Design a summer camp for your writing project. What would it look like if you had two weeks, one week, a long weekend? What would a version look like that was just one day, even? Look at your camp designs and choose a schedule that works for you.
What would you build into a “sleep away” camp for your current creative practice?
Summer Solstice:
At the Summer Solstice (June 21, 2026) even the North Pole is bathed in light. We have the most light and we can write the most at that time. Prepare a day during which you can write outside. Take what you need to eat, to drink, to read, to write, to be comfortable. (Harvest herbs, which are at their most potent on the longest day.) Branch out and wander if you get stuck, but hold the day’s light as a challenge to create wildly.
Challenge yourself to expand your practice as the daylight hours lengthen.
Solar Eclipse:
Later in the summer - August 12, 2026 - we have a total solar eclipse. This might be a time of sacred pause and I would suggest staging it as such. Part of what we foster in creating a writing practice is making an obstacle work for us instead of against us. Let this literal obstacle to the light interrupt your practice. Use the return of the light moments later as a very rich time and trust it to give you something. (Or score tickets to Bjork’s rave and just do that. No one would blame you.)
Allow the eclipse to let you reconsider obstacles.
Make yourself green:
For this practice, return to the seeds you planted in the last season. When you allow these seeds to grow green you nourish them. This might mean a commitment to:
Sunlight - the giving over of daylight hours to drafting
Fertilization - productive reading, viewing, listening, or research
Weeding - the removal of restricting or distracting activities
Space to grow - the establishment of the structural spaces your drafts will fill
To create in the green is to grow without impediment, to be fecund and unapologetic about your work’s expansiveness. Set a commitment to this work in the summer. Share and accountability spreadsheet with a friend; schedule check-ins or ways of sharing. Keep up with your own growth.
Be green, you bright things!
Still looking for something else? Choose from this wonderful list of summer writing prompts from Ploughshares by Anca Szilagyi.
Events
Finally, use summer to connect with nature and others. On Saturday, June 13, starting at 9:30 a.m., we are excited to offer a special writing opportunity. Led by Fordham English alum, Jacob Myron Cerdena, this writing workshop hike will feature reading, writing, a meal, and a 3 mile roundtrip hike to a secret reservoir. During this workshop students will exercise writing by instinct and observation, with the goal to connect writer and environment. While writing can be used as a way to center and hold weight, this workshop is intended to guide the students towards weightlessness, instinct, and "big picture" writing, unlocked by a grand view of the mountains and a serene mountaintop lake.
For more information and to RSVP (by May 28, latest), click here!
Other literary events happening this summer:
NYC Poetry Fest: July 18 and 19, 2026
Bryant Park’s Outdoor Reading Room
Nantucket Book Festival: https://www.nantucketbookfestival.org/
Bronx Book Festival: June 20, 2026
Or find any other event you’re interested in on the Poets & Writers Event List.