My Secret to Creative Rejuvenation? Conferences.

Each conference feels like a world unto itself — a cosmos of lanyards, printed schedules and elevator banter with other wearers of lanyards. My “gateway” conferences, years ago, began as an excuse to escape the boredom of my work cubicle. For the last decade, I’ve attended events related to my writing career. At a conference held at Princeton, Anne Lamott says of writing, “Stop not doing it.” In palm-tree-filled Pasadena, the artist Makoto Fujimura talks about art and beauty and then paints a giant canvas on the floor while a pianist improvises. I recall the poet Christian Wiman speaking in a church on the Upper West Side considering the space between belief and unbelief, and afterward signing my copy of his book: “Yours in faith and with great hope.”