How do we make art in a broken world? Author Mitali Perkins knows that the creative life can seem selfish. As the daughter of immigrants, she studied toward a career of eradicating poverty and knows the internal voice that challenges: "How dare you retreat to your studio to create?" Yet Perkins learned that writing fiction helped her pursue a better world. In Just Making, she offers a justice-driven perspective on creativity. "My ancestors are village Bengali women who made beautiful things but didn't dare to dream of art as a career," she writes. Women across the globe have crafted beauty and order amid chaos, war, and deprivation, and Perkins turns our attention to what we learn from them. Just Making introduces us to strategies such as forgetfulness in flow, tenderness in trauma, and crossing borders. In conversation with creative guides like Nikki Grimes, Chad Somers, and Carol Aust, Perkins offers ten practices that help us keep making and to keep up the fight.