Midwest Writers Room
Podcast from the Wisconsin Writers Association. We discuss all things writerly, with an emphasis on the unique flavor of works that originate in the Midwest.
Midwest Writers Room
Chapter Break with Ryan T Pozzi
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BIO:
Ryan T. Pozzi is a Council Bluffs, Iowa-based nonfiction author whose debut, The Mess That Made Them: How History’s Greatest Artists Failed, Floundered, and Made Something Brilliant Anyway, is published by Bloomsbury. After two decades as a working artist and nonprofit executive, Pozzi left nonprofit leadership and eventually turned to writing. His work explores creativity, failure, persistence, reputation, and the complicated lives behind famous accomplishments. He writes the newsletter Life on the Midlist and is touring the Midwest with The Mess That Made Them in 2026.
SYNOPSIS:
A painter on the run for murder. A novelist fighting to keep her mind and her work intact. A composer writing under a dictatorship. Artists rejected, exiled, silenced, rewritten, and nearly forgotten.
The Mess That Made Them goes behind the mythology surrounding twenty-four legendary creative lives to uncover what brilliance looked like before anyone knew it would last. The book traces failure, pressure, obsession, reinvention, and the stubborn human impulse to keep making something when success, recognition, and even survival are far from guaranteed.
LINKS:
ryantpozzi.com
@ryantpozzi
