Episode 116

The Inklings, Creativity, and Community with Diana Glyer

To listen to this or any of our episodes in full, visit ttf.org/podcasts and to help make content like this possible, join the Trinity Forum Society.

Our Summer 2025 series, Beside Still Waters, focuses on the places where creativity brings life into a world fatigued by brokenness and division. From jazz to Jane Austen and in between, this season we’ll focus on the ways literature and the arts can refresh and challenge our inner lives—and connect us with the Creator of the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Today’s guide is the author and professor Diana Glyer. She’ll be talking about the lives and work of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their beloved community known as the Inklings.

“What made the Inklings work so well … was largely their differences … if we want to think like an Inkling, we need to start by cultivating genuine friendship with people who have a different point of view … think about how curiosity and humility can help to energize the kind of interactions that we have.”

In this episode drawn from an online conversation held in February of 2021, Diana focuses on how creativity thrives within small clusters of like-hearted people. We hope you enjoy reflecting on the potential of your own friendships and communities to be culture-shaping.