Since 2021, Dr. Guertin and Betsy Wilkening have been masterfully blending fiber art with critical scientific topics like global warming, climate change, and environmental threats, all while offering potential solutions. In 2024, Dr. Decker proposed an innovative expansion: a multimodal ekphrastic project that pairs powerful poetry with evocative art.

 

This book is the stunning result. You'll find a diverse array of artwork—from exquisite fiber art quilts to compelling drawings, paintings, and even museum pieces—each carefully selected to illuminate the theme of "making the unseen, seen" and to forge a powerful connection between science and art through the medium of poetry.

 

We strongly encourage you to delve into the Artist/Scientist Statements at the back of the book. These illuminating insights provide brief, accessible explanations that enhance the thoughtful poems, making complex scientific topics relatable and engaging for everyone.

 

It has been a true joy to bring this project to life. We hope you'll return to these pages again and again, discovering new layers of meaning with each reading.

 

Contributors to this book include: Donald Beagle, Emily Bilman, Joyce Brinkman, Sarah-Beth Bradley, Megan Brown, Emma M. Burkett, Samantha Carr, Joan Ellen Casey, Loralee Clark, Tricia Coulson, Marcela Bianchessi da Cunha-Santino, Dr. Kathleen P. Decker, Zoey Dudding, Jae Dyche, Christie King Eckardt , Kerry Faraone, Catalina Florina Florescu, Anna Isabella Fratarcangelo, Chapman Hood Frazier, Dennis Owen Frohlich, Gail Giewont, Dr. Michale Glennon, Marjorie Gowdy, Jody Gruendel, Dr. Laura Guertin, Cathy Hailey, Lauren Haygood, Kate Hedstrom, Wayne David Hubbard, Mark Hudson, Piper Jameson, Robert J. Keeler, Dr. Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Barbara Martina Linde, Sally Harcum Maxwell, Greg McNamara, Susan Copley Novack, Holly Panzera, Sarah Parker, Tessa Peixoto, Suzanne Underwood Rhodes, Lynne Schreiber, Mattie Quesenberry Smith, Ron Smith, Alica Swain, Johannes Vermeer, Betsy Wilkening, Diana Woodcock, Nicole Zwolinski.

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I have spent over forty years working in intelligence analysis and in the last ten of those years have expanded into teaching crime analysis. There are a few textbooks that touch on one or the other of these analytical styles, but I do not know of any text that draws close parallels between the two, teaches how to do the analysis for both through writing, and dispels some of the myths about intelligence, the Intelligence Community, and intelligence writing. Therefore, I decided to write this book.
Intelligence and crime analysis writing is difficult. But much can be done to better explain how to do these kinds of analyses, and I hope to do just that in the pages of this book. Furthermore, the texts I am familiar with all have one glaring shortcoming: how does one deal with the real world that all intelligence and crime analysts exist in? This book touches on attempts to manipulate intelligence by consumers and producers of intelligence and gives examples of those attempts.
This textbook is not just a book about analysis and writing. Intelligence analysts face a wide number of problems not confronting other professions. For example, all consumers of intelligence have an agenda, and they are looking to get support for their policies, prejudices, or biases from intelligence. Few other professions are subjected to such close scrutiny by the public and the media.
The media too have a political bias. Furthermore, far too few members of the media of to the primary sources---the intelligence reports---as a basis for their reporting. As a result, some of their reporting is based on unsubstantiated information instead of primary sources. Often these primary sources are available but are not checked out. I have discussed the many difficulties all intelligence officers by providing face-real world problems.