Author
Austin Kleon
The writer and artist who turned sharing your process into a creative practice.
1 book on BookYol
The story and the impact
Austin Kleon is an American writer and artist who lives in Austin, Texas. He first became known for Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by taking newspaper articles and blacking out most of their words with a marker, leaving only a few to form each poem.
He is best known for three short illustrated books about creative work: Steal Like an Artist (2012), on how influence and copying turn into original work; Show Your Work! (2014), on sharing your process so that others can find you; and Keep Going (2019), on staying creative through good times and bad. The books mix short essays with his own drawings and hand-written lists.
Alongside the books he keeps a blog and sends a weekly newsletter of things he has found worth sharing, practising in public the habits his books describe.
The signature
Kleon's signature is the short, visual, list-like book that treats creativity as a practice rather than a talent. He credits his influences openly, works in public and argues that ordinary makers can be useful to each other without being geniuses. The tone is generous and practical, closer to advice from a working artist than to a theory of creativity.