Emptiness & Creativity with Novelist Ruth Ozeki

Cultural Mixtapes

On today’s episode we have novelist and Zen Buddhist Priest Ruth Ozeki. She is the author of several books, including A Tale for the Time Being which was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize, and her latest novel The Book of Form and Emptiness was published by Penguin Random House in 2021 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022. Ozeki also teaches creative writing at Smith College in Western Massachusetts.

Ozeki’s writing tackles a multitude of difficult metaphysical ideas while simultaneously maintaining a vivid narrative. The Book of Form and Emptiness is a story of a boy named Benny who starts hearing voices after the death of his father. This experience of hearing voices is where we started our conversation, but it quickly became an exploration into the fictions of normality, the limitations of a western worldview, the buddhist philosophies of emptiness and impermanence, and many other topics. As Ozeki blended an explanation of meditation with a foray into her creative process, it’s quickly apparent that for her, creating art and living intentionally amongst the noise of our world, are not dissimilar. This conversation was immensely fascinating and altered my thinking both creatively and spiritually.

The Book of Form and Emptiness
Ruth Ozeki's Website
Recommendations
Piranesi by Susanna Clark
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver