Welcome to The Habit of Art by Kelcey Ervick, a free illustrated newsletter about the ups, downs, twists, turns, and life-changing power of making art and telling stories. By a writer who draws.
I’ve been writing for a lot of years. I got a PhD in it. I’m a professor of it. I’ve published multiple books. But a few years ago, I started drawing every day, and it changed everything. How I look at the world, how I SEE the world, how I think, how I write, how I teach, how I draw. It also led to getting an agent and publisher for my graphic memoir.
I am passionate about writing and drawing these Substack posts, where I share insights, struggles, and creative inspiration based on my work as an author, artist, and professor—and where I am equally inspired by the community.
On Substack
The Habit of Art has been featured twice on Substack: my post A Woman Reading was cited in Substack Reads. Soon after, I was featured on Substack Discover.
Subscribe to receive illustrated posts about:
Why it’s so important and radical (and hard!) to make art and tell our stories—and how not to let the “hard” part get in the way.
How to cultivate a “habit of art”—lessons from my years of daily art-making.
Books I’ve read. Cats I’ve loved. Birds I’ve watched.
Paid Subscriptions: You can also join a number of folks and become a paid subscriber who keeps me going all year long!
On the web
Author website: https://kelceyervick.com/
Art sometimes on Instagram.
Doomscrolling has moved to Bluesky.
I wrote about the experience of daily art-making at The Rumpus, twice.
On the bookshelf
I’m the author of 4 award-winning books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the graphic memoir, The Keeper (Avery/Penguin), which was featured in the The New York Times Book Review’s Holiday Gift Guide. It’s about growing up in girls’ sports in the early years of Title IX, and figuring out how, if I can’t become Miss America, I might become a writer like my fellow goalkeeper Vladimir Nabokov.
Inspired by my own shift toward visual storytelling, I co-edited The Field Guide to Graphic Literature, which is about how to make all kinds of comics, graphic poetry, and literary collage.
My previous award-winning books are For Sale by Owner, a story collection of suburban surrealities; Liliane’s Balcony, a novella set at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater; and The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová, a poetic biography of a long-dead female fairy tale writer—and the postcards I wrote to her. More about all books here.
On the river
I live on the banks of the St. Joseph River in northern Indiana, where I am regularly attacked by geese and red-winged blackbirds. I’m a professor of creative writing at Indiana University South Bend, which also happens to be on the banks of the St. Joe River.
In the studio
After two decades and three books written in shared spaces, I finally have a room of my own.
