Cultivating the Muse looks beyond the secure and benign images traditionally associated with inspiration in classical literature and scholarship. In contrast to the shapeless collectivity of the Muses in ancient accounts, this collection aspires to redeem their shape in other more vitalforms, closer or more distant incarnations of the ever-elusive maiden. Protagonists -- or victims -- in a complex game of cultural exploration, the alternative Muses and muse-like figures of this book are manipulated, abused, or effaced, but at the same time they also advocate or resist their fatesand explore their own powers of persuasion. Inspiration is here not so much explored in its traditional cultic dimensions, but rather invoked for its capacity to trigger fervent debates about power, desire, knowledge, identity, and gender in the societies of ancient Greece and Rome.

It's 2005. Blogs are becoming a thing, flip phones are the epitome of texting tech, and AOL still sends out those freebie trial discs. They’re also tough times in Detroit, especially for Hamtramck girl and part-time tech blogger Toni Dzielny. Within days, she’s lost her technical writing job, has to swear off coffee due to her hypertension, and interviews for her dream job as a writer for the Detroit Free Press, only to find she’s competing for the same job with her beautiful nemesis, Kayla Ratcliff. As if that weren’t enough, she learns her ex-boyfriend, Leo Donnelli, was murdered less than two miles from her house. But before he died, he snail-mailed her a mysterious computer disc telling her to “keep it secret, keep it safe.” And the fact the police consider her a “person of interest” in Leo’s murder doesn’t bode well. So when the real murderer threatens Toni, her friends, and her family, she's had enough. Toni enlists the help of her geeky friends to clear her name and learn the contents of the disc before she shares Leo's fate. They discover the disc not only points to why Leo was murdered, but that it holds a secret that could save her sick mother’s life.