Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life

by Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Meet queer, BIPOC, and women artists around the world as they discuss the gifts, costs, and redemptive power of pursuing a creative life

Is the all-encompassing quest to become a self-sustaining artist worth the sacrifices it often requires? Throughout her 20s and 30s, Stephanie Elizondo Griest could not help worrying if constantly prioritizing her writing over everything else—from postponing children to living nomadically to save on rent—was leading her to fulfillment or regret. After a break-up and serious health crisis in her early 40s, she decided to turn to other women artists for their perspectives on that perennial is art enough?

Art Above Everything introduces us to legendary writers, visual artists, dancers, and musicians across the globe, who talk intimately about their art, what it requires, what it gifts them, and what it costs them. Opening in a classical Indian dance village, Elizondo Griest goes on to meet 100+ artists in Rwanda, Romania, Qatar, Iceland, Mexico, New Zealand, Cuba, and the United States. She discovers artists from Rwandan playwright Hope Azeda, who navigated ethnic tensions as she attempted to bring about reconciliation through theater in the aftermath of genocide; to Romanian painter Florica Prevenda, who got assigned to a provincial factory during Ceaușescu’s dictatorship but never relinquished her brushes.

Art is inheritance, dissent, devotion, revenge, celebration, and more. Yet though each artist’s relationship to their craft is different, their need to create in the face of economic hardship, misogyny, sexual violence, and family ostracization is wholly akin.

Bold and inspiring, Art Above Everything never pretends that the artist’s path is easy—but it illuminates the infinite ways we can wield creativity as a vitalizing force.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Memoir

266 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 10, 2025

About the author

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Her six books include: Around the Bloc, Mexican Enough, All the Agents and Saints, and Art Above Everything. Widely anthologized, she has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Believer, BBC, and Oxford American. Her work has won a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting. Currently Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed as both a Moth storyteller and as a literary ambassador for the U.S. State Department.

Reviews

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art Above Everything is an excellent introspective, from an artist’s point of view (and about other artists), asking the question, “Is it worth it?” Stephanie Elizondo Griest offers intersperses her personal stories about her own sacrifices while telling the stories of women across the world and the artistic spectrum. From dancers in India to writers in Iceland, this is a beautifully written collection of lives in service of art. I finished this book with a deep sense of gratitude for the artists that color our world.

[Aden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was lucky to go to a reading with Griest, and I think she's a better orator/instructor than author. An interesting pseudo-memoir, travelogue, and manifesto for prioritizing art. I didn't buy everything she was putting down, but there are interesting moments throughout.

[nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is moving, motivating, and engaging. My only complaint is that I couldn't put it down, so I often stayed up too late reading it!

[Julianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Griest has a transformative way of writing and sharing her experience that opens your eyes. Hearing about her journey was incredible and interviews she conducted were incredibly interesting