Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me curate and manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog.
The blog name refers to the mythical pact between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the epic narrative, the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House, now part of Reading Is Fundamental, and still miraculously in print.
Posts on this site reflect personal opinion and commentary protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Guest Post: Loree Griffin Burns on Extreme Birdwatching
In Extreme Birdwatching: Measuring Change on a Galapagos Island, Loree Griffin Burns zooms in on a single island from the famed archipelago. Welcome to Daphne, not the kind of island you might go to for a beach vacation—no sandy beaches or resorts or even shade, and its volcanic crater is home to thousands of nesting blue-footed boobies:
For all these reasons, most people who visit this part of the world sail right past Daphne. But there are an unusually determined and curious few who’ve stopped, who’ve gone ashore, and who’ve seen astonishing things there.
This is the story of those people. Even more, it’s the story of those astonishing things.
Loree’s book is packed with information as it traces Peter and Rosemary Grant’s four-year study of the finches on Daphne Island. They studied hundreds of birds twice each year, precisely measuring their beaks, wings, and bodies, banding them, and recording the entire process. Illustrated by Jamie Green, this book is also filled with a clear affection for those “astonishing things” that abound on the island and for the people, no less admirable, who study them.
Loree writes here about using the power of story to persuade, writing through the human complications of opposing beliefs, and toward understanding.
Guest Post: Nora Shalaway Carpenter on Curating and Editing the Climate Fiction Anthology, Onward
Nora Shalaway Carpenter (my former student, I’m proud to say) has edited a fine array of climate-centered short stories in a new anthology, Onward: 16 Climate Fiction Short Stories to Inspire Hope. In the foreword Nora writes about the vulnerability of the next reading generation, dubbed “Gen Dread” for the understandable anxiety they express at growing up in a world increasingly beset by climate devastation and disasters. Yet we are still human, together on the only planet that is currently our home. That's the overwhelming message in these stories.
Each piece advances the theme in a different way. Seeds carry the impossible eluctation of hope in a devastated world (“The Care and Feeding of Mother” by Erin Entrada Kelly). You can travel to the farthest place from humanity on the planet, and be surprised (“Graveyard for the Sky” by Aleese Lin). A shocking turn in an election for class president (“The Manatee is Not a Meme” by Gloria Muñoz) leads to an impulsive gesture of commitment. For a kid hauling trash on a lakeshore beach (“Blue Glass by Anuradha D. Rajurkar) guilt is isolating and personal but redemption shows up in connection. Settling into resentful teenage (“A Trashy Love Story” by Sarah Aronson), a girl is jolted into seeing who she was, and who she might become. Most of the stories are in prose, with two in verse. Together, they reach into uncertainty, perhaps into time itself, like the protagonist of Rachel Hylton’s sensitive, elegant contribution, “The Stealth Arborist.”
Nora sees bringing an anthology into being as a process akin to building community. Here’s her reflection on the creation of this book.
Hell, No, Don’t Go: Canadian Stories (and American Avoidance) of Vietnam War Resistance
As we near the 51st anniversary of the fall of Saigon, marking the end of the Vietnam War (known in Vietnam as the American War) we find ourselves looking into the abyss of the war with Iran. This one’s been declared by an American president for reasons at best unclear, at worst whimsical and thoughtless. It makes more sense than ever to look back upon that 20th century war with two names.
Last year, I attended a talk by Joline Martin about her nonfiction book, War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War. The book offers a contemporary perspective on the struggles and triumphs of the American Vietnam war resisters who crossed the border into Canada and settled on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They are an invisible minority and Martin’s book sheds light on how it felt for them to leave friends and families. She recounts the compassion they encountered, the hurdles they overcame, the heartache that resulted from their life-changing decisions, and what they contributed over the years to their new home.
“Not a Fairy Tale.” Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance by Jane Harrington
From the moment I first heard of Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance by Jane Harrington, I was intrigued. It’s a compendium of stories by the group of women in the subtitle: “the forgotten founding mothers of the fairy tale.”
Founding mothers? How come I’d never heard of them? Think of the fairy tale in the Western world and one naturally thinks of Charles Perrault, right? And after him, the Brothers Grimm. And later Hans Christian Andersen. Not a founding mother in sight. That is the assumption Harrington takes aim at.
Of her book, Jane Harrington wrote in The Orange & Bee substack:
It’s an interwoven work of biographies and stories, featuring seven of the conteuses—Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Charlotte-Rose de La Force, Henriette-Julie de Murat, Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier, Catherine Bernard, Catherine Durand, and Louise d’Auneuil—who together wrote more than seventy tales while bravely pushing against the homophobic, misogynistic, ultra-conservative reign of Louis XIV. These histories, though necessarily brief (erasure was real, and there’s only so much that can be recovered), are deeply researched yet conveyed not in an academic tone but in a conversational voice, something these salon writers favored in their own writing.
Guest Post: Jesse Weiner on Embracing Uncertainty
Jesse Weiner holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I taught for sixteen years and became, I’m convinced, a better writer for it. Among the awe-inspiring faculty members the year I joined was Norma Fox Mazer—quiet, clear-eyed, she wrote words that sang themselves off the page. Why do I raise this? When Jesse was a student at VCFA, she won the Norma Fox Mazer Award, which recognizes excellence in craft. Those are the kinds of overlapping circles that feel like gifts.
Jesse’s a cross-genre writer and poet. Her work has appeared in places like The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Poetry Hall. Jesse is also a writing coach and developmental editor through her business, Inksational Editorial. She also runs a free newsletter with open submission calls, contests and grants, and other industry info. Click here to learn more and sign up.
I’m delighted to welcome Jesse Weiner to WWBT.
Guest Post: Kate Hosford on You and I Are Stars and Night
Kate Hosford has a new picture book out, You and I Are Stars and Night, illustrated by Richard Jones. The book is a rhythmic lullaby with a rhyming pattern that feels like waves, from the wind sweeping through a sleeping village, all the way to a bedtime ship sailing into a starry night. It’s of those bedtime books that invites a child to linger on its pages, to snuggle into the bedtime read, and even to predict the end rhyme of each spread.
Here’s Kate on the making of her dreamy, playful book.
Process Talk: Pooja Makhijani on Bread Is Love
My writing path has crossed Pooja Makhijani’s many times since I first came across her essay, "The First Time," in the November/December 2003 issue of Cicada magazine, an essay for which she won that year’s SCBWI Magazine Award Honor in Nonfiction. years later, we chatted about the first Asian American to win the Newbery Medal—Dhan Gopal Mukerji, in 1928. That conversation and others led to her terrific article in The Atlantic on the implications, of this forgotten history of American children’s literature. Pooja’s picture book, Mama’s Saris, captured the delights of dressing up, the allure of beautiful fabric and the longing of a little girl to celebrate identity in her own way. Now another picture book, Bread is Love, illustrated by Lavanya Naidu, similarly blends sensory moments with the delicious warmth of shared family connections. Welcome to WWBT, Pooja!
Process Talk: Meera Subramanian and Danica Novgorodoff
Around us, storms are storming, droughts are droughting, ice is melting. Polar bears and whales are doing their best to adapt, while we’re whizzing toward tipping points at great speed. Mostly I want to duck and hide but there’s nowhere to hide. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry’s trying to get as much of its product out of the ground as fast as it can, when it knew perfectly well, decades ago, that this was coming.
As always, swirling news about the planet and us resolve into a single question for me: what do we tell young people? What can we say that will help them cope with effects whose scope we are only now beginning to understand? If you wanted an answer that is appealing and humane, vivid and thoughtful, clear and compassionate, here it is—A Better World is Possible: Global Youth confront the Climate Crisis by Meera Subramanian and Danica Novgorodoff. I asked them if they’d tell me about making this book. Here’s our e-mail exchange.
Process Talk: Sandra Nickel on The True Ugly Duckling
Hans Christian Andersen’s stories were part of my childhood writing life. It was a weirdly magical intersection that I’ve written about over the years. When I was invited to write text for Nasrin Khosravi’s glorious Thumbelina art, it felt like a circle completing. What’s even more gratifying is that this circle keeps expanding.
Sandra Nickel was a student at VCFA when I taught there, and she’s just written a picture book biography of Andersen that delves into his life, his creative impulses, and the many ways that story transformed “a poor shoemaker’s son. who was tall and skinny.” The True Ugly Duckling: How Hans Christian Andersen Became a Swan is a picture book with many layers of story and cut-paper art, at once delicate and wildly fanciful, by Calvin Nicholls. Here’s my conversation with Sandra Nickel about her picture book tribute to a man whose immortal stories and sometimes melancholy life continue to intrigue and inspire.
Guest Post: What if…?Julie Lawson on Bear on the Train
Julie Lawson’s Bear on the Train is a wordier picture book than we’re used to seeing now, yet how delicately drawn its relationships are: boy and bear, bear and landscape, landscape and train. The train is the moving target of the reader’s attention and the boy becomes a stand-in for the reader. I have admired this book for years, I once had a copy that walked away from my bookshelf (maybe it took a train somewhere), so I was delighted to find a replacement copy at Russell Books, Victoria’s wonderful used bookstore. I was further delighted to find that Julie is the friend of a friend, so I asked her to reflect on the making of this book, which is sadly out of print now.
Guest Post: Suma Subramaniam on the V. Malar Series
Writing the Book Uncle trilogy was a recursive process for me, as I had to go back and read the first book, pretending to be that new, naive reader demanded by revision. I sketched characters in small increments, then let them surprise me as their stories braided together. I became curious about how other writers approach the work of turning a single book into many stories. How do you do this in a way that respects young readers’ intelligence without condescension? Rewriting was where the trilogy found its shape: I pruned sentimentality, sharpened dialogue, and tried to make space for humor and everyday grace.
I read Suma Subramaniam’s first V. Malar book with particular pleasure on account of its setting. It is the precise rural counterpart to the urban setting of my Book Uncle books. I could see these characters talking to each other. I could see my little trio of friends finding themselves enlightened and challenged by the very same forest camp where young Malar finds herself.
So I’m especially delighted to welcome Suma back to talk about writing her second V. Malar book, V. Malar, Greatest Ranger of All Time.
Process Talk: Monisha Bajaj on A Year of Kites
I used to be a clumsy kid, so I have to admit that I never took to kite-flying. It called for more dexterity and coordination than I was ever capable of, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of kites, at once tethered and not, splashing the sky with bright color and fluttering movement, riding on the wind. They’re also amazingly poignant symbols of us, humans, our feet on earth and our hearts, yearning. See my post on the Fly With Me Kite Festival. So I was delighted to see the e-galley of A Year of Kites by Monisha Bajaj, illustrated by Amber Ren. Its spreads are filled with the magic of kites in skies around the world. I invited Monisha to talk about the creation of this book.
Process Talk: Andrée Poulin on Planting Sunshine
Children live in the same world as we do. It’s a world with violence, inequity, discrimination, hatred. It’s a world in which wars break out, drag on, reignite. If we pretend otherwise, imagining childhood as a magical place sealed off from reality, we’re deluding ourselves. Denying knowledge of war to children living in the relative privilege of a peacetime society only propagates the notion that we don’t really have to care about other people’s children, who may not be as lucky as our own.
Also, children are not easily duped. If there’s something we try to hide from them, that is the very thing they will do their best to ferret out. These are the knotty issues taken on by an unlikely text—Planting Sunshine is a slender novella in verse by Quebec writer Andrée Poulin, illustrated by Montreal-based musician and artist Enzo. I invited Andrée Poulin to tell me more about the making of this little jewel of a book.
Guest Post: Rowena Rae on Why We Need Vaccines
I met Rowena Rae when our books were both shortlisted for the 2025 City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize. That unexpected recognition (for me anyway!) brought us together — it’s the kind of writerly connection that feels like a gift.
We all come to this children’s writing gig along vastly different paths. Rowena worked as a biologist in Canada and New Zealand before becoming a freelance writer and editor and a children’s author. Like me, she lives in Victoria, British Columbia. We share a sense of perspective lent by a little mountain that used to be called Mount Douglas and has now officially embraced its SENĆOŦEN (Saanich language) name, PKOLS. I love that the Indigenous name has slipped gracefully into public nomenclature. The mountain is a defining geographical feature of this island that Rowena and I both call home.
Rowena’s shortlisted book is Why We Need Vaccines: How Humans Beat Infectious Diseases, illustrated by Paige Stampatori. I asked Rowena to tell me more about the creation of her information-packed book for young readers.
Guest Post: Megan Pomper on What Makes a Bird?
I met Megan Pomper when our books were both shortlisted for the City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize. Megan’s book, What Makes a Bird? follows a child asking that singular question. It follows a child’s curiosity. In seeking to define a bird, the book accomplishes many things at once.
It shows us the amazing range of birdlife while serving as an introduction to sameness and difference, categories and criteria. It teases apart feathers, flight, songs, nesting, eggs, and migration, showing how shape, habit, and habitat combine to make each bird species distinct, yet part of a larger avian family. Maia Hoekstra’s full page and spot illustrations will help children connect observation to understanding and encourage backyard investigations. Flat colour contrasts with white line-work that depicts bird silhouettes, bubbles, shoreline, and the light in the sky.
My Book at 30: Ganesha Dances On With Reading Is Fundamental
This year, the book this blog is named for, the second book I ever wrote, The Broken Tusk: Stories of the Hindu God Ganesha, turns 30. In many ways, with the gentle guidance of editor Diantha Thorpe, this was the book that taught me how to write. Twenty years ago, in 2006, when its original independent publisher, Linnet Books, closed its doors, The Broken Tusk was picked up by another press known for its commitment to fine storytelling, August House.
August House kept The Broken Tusk in the world of print and e-books for another couple of decades. It sold steadily over the years. Parents began to email me telling me they’d read it as children and were now reading it to their kids. Now my book is traveling once more, this time in an unexpected yet fitting direction.
The Sill of the World: Where is the Writer in the Text?
As another year begins I find myself thinking of the passage of time, of generations, and of story.
And because I too, have a fond relationship with an ancient Remington Rand typewriter that sits on my shelf (keeping company with Hobson Jobson, a rhyming dictionary, the Monier Williams Sanskrit to English, and Volumes XVI to XX of the OED) such thoughts lead quite naturally to Richard Wilbur’s poem, “The Writer.”
In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I love to think of the many ways there are for us to position ourselves in the stories we write. Here is the poet, moving from the sound of clacking keys to this reflection:
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
And from there to the memory of a starling finding its way into the house, thrashing around while trying desperately to escape, and finally making it, “clearing the sill of the world.” It’s one of those poems that thickens with each reading, or maybe it’s just that I read it every few years so that I am the one who has managed to slow down sufficiently to see beneath the poem’s surface.
Landscape and Language in Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?
In Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane wrote about the land in ways that made me feel as if I could touch the moss, hear the water flow. His prose enchanted, prompting me to read out loud. But I have only ever been a tourist in England, so while I was dazzled by the intricate connections of land and language, Landmarks, on the whole, spoke to me intellectually rather than emotionally. This book is different. Is a River Alive? flows through three distinct waterscapes and links them inescapably with our own human water bodies.
Guest Post: William Alexander on Sunward
When I taught at VCFA, I had the pleasure of serving on faculty with plenty of smart, informed, talented writers. Among them was William Alexander. Will is the author of Goblin Secrets (a National Book Award winner), Nomad, A Properly Unhaunted Place, and other novels, as well as chapter books both fiction and non.
Now he’s written a book for grownups, Sunward, in which the protagonist, Tova Lir, is a planetary courier responsible for training adolescent androids.Is this space opera, or cozy sci-fi? Maybe it’s both. In the world of Sunward, robotic kids need care, nurturing, raising, much like human kids. The novel is set in a solar system racked by interplanetary conflict in the wake of an explosion on Earth’s moon. In the best sci-fi tradition, this is at once our world, and not.
Allow me a brief digression. This blog, Writing With a Broken Tusk, is named for a boy who was made, not born. That’s the essence of the origin story (over a thousand years old) of Ganesha/Ganesh, the elephant headed god of Hindu tradition. The goddess Parvati made him—from earth, in some tellings and in others, from dirt and/or skin cells sloughed off her own body. A post about a book that deals with raising robotic foster children felt like a good fit here.
In Sunward, fiction creates dynamic possibilities out of the dismal future projections that inundate us. It also contains implications for real children. Thank you, Will, for indulging me and writing this guest post for WWBT.
A Half-visible Map: Reading Projects Itself into Writing
How to Lose a Country: The 7 Steps From Democracy to Fascism by Ece Temelkuran is rooted in the author’s experience in Turkey, but the picture it draws is of the rising neo-fascist right, not just in one country but around the world.
When I’m thinking of a work in progress, I tend to use everything I read as a filter for the undeveloped work. So I read Ece Temelkuran’s nonfiction work of politics, history, and memoir while simultaneously reflecting on entry points into a verse novel that is still a drafty patchwork of intentions and plot and half-formed characters. The world of the novel is a dystopian North America. Like a few other early drafts, it was dashed off in a great fury and then put away for a year or two, or five, to marinate in its own juices, depleted of the urgency that sent it spiralling up in the first place. My process, be warned, is messy, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. You go find your own way to mess up.