Willingness: A Writer' s Meditations on Crossing the Flood invites wonder, inspires joy, and encourages artists of all kinds to embrace the enigmas that fuel creativity. A posthumous collection drawn from legendary author and mentor Kevin " Mc" McIlvoy' s four decades of teaching, lecturing, and editing, Willingness is a testament to his " process of searching" for truth: the " dark and luminous beauty" that pulses at the deepest heart of human experience- and authentic art. The only nonfiction book among his ten published works of fiction and poetry, Willingness was in process at the time of Mc' s sudden death in 2022. His wife, the writer Christine Hale, completed it by arranging excerpts from lectures, notes, handouts, essays, and interviews. Mc' s colleagues and students recognized in him a strange genius; Willingness offers readers- those meeting him here for the first time and long-time followers longing to reconnect- the associative, recursive, branching-rather-than-arriving, mind-expanding experience of hearing him speak. " A gift," from the capacious heart and mind of McIlvoy, writes Peter Turchi in his introduction, Willingness is a book not on how to write but how to keep writing.