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: Mima Tipper on Channeling Marilyn
Seventeen-year-old Lexa Donovan’s timid, plus-size life goes sideways when the spirit of Marilyn Monroe takes up residence in her body in this laugh-out-loud funny paranormal YA tale perfect for fans of Lisa Schroeder and Ashley Poston.
That’s from the publisher description of Mima Tipper’s new YA novel, Channeling Marilyn, featuring none other than the ghostly presence of—ta da!—Marilyn Monroe. Wish you’d thought of that, right?
The star who became an icon, who wowed generations, turns up to aid a girl whose longings are matched only by her own self-doubt. How on earth can Lexa manage to pull off a role famously played by the goddess of the silver screen herself?
Mima Tipper spools out a charming, funny storyline ahead of her engaging character. It’s replete with obstacles. There’s a crush. There’s a little bit of a triangle. There’s fear. There’s stage-fright. And then Marilyn, wouldn't you know, starts reaching beyond her role of resident mentor and coach. And under it all is a layer of loss and grieving.
Here’s Mima to give us a curious, unexpected perspective on writing this book—its dedication:
Guest Post: Bex Hogan on Owl King
Nettle by UK writer Bex Hogan (“a Cornish girl at heart”) is the first book in the Faery Realms series. As Nettle stumbles into a parallel world, placing her grandmother in grave danger, she’s taken captive by a malevolent faery king and given impossible tasks to complete. If this is reminiscent of fairy tale tropes that resemblance comes from both influence and intent.
Even while Nettle’s untangling relationships of the heart, she finds out who she is and how she became trapped in her circumstances—and what, in the end, she cares about. The prose spools out in a clear first person, past tense narrative, the protagonist’s perspective revealing the story and its setting in well-paced sequence.
Excerpt:
The air was thick with magic, I could practically taste it and I knew that while this place was hauntingly beautiful, it was also undoubtedly dangerous.
In Owl King, we return to that faery world, where the borders between the magical and human worlds are porous yet jealously guarded, power is wielded by flawed characters susceptible to impulse, and matters of the heart can govern the fates of many. Echoes of Scheherazade play through the stories that Lyla tells the titular Owl King, even as her sister Ilsette tries desperately to free her. The nested tales are scattered through the book, some tender and nurturing, others cautionary in nature.
Here’s Bex Hogan herself, reflecting on the influence of fairy tales on writing this book. Welcome, Bex!
Guest Post: Kaua Adams on An Expanse of Blue
Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams and I crossed paths two years ago over a project I’d been nurturing for a while. She is now my collaborator on this work, which is absolutely all I can say at the moment. We hope that one day, it will find a form that honors the material and people that have moved us both and brought us together as partners in craft.
Coincidentally, I was delighted to find out that Kaua is also a graduate of the VCFA MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults where I taught for 16 years.
Kaua writes poetry and short stories and now she has written a verse novel, An Expanse of Blue, that draws on her own Hawaiian heritage.
“Now is the Time of Monsters.” Reflections on Pet by Akwaeke Emezi
“The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” These lines are by Italian philosopher, politician, and linguist Antonio Gramsci, written from within a Fascist prison. Amitav Ghosh points out that Gramsci would have had difficulty comprehending the monsters of our time.
A cultural anthropology take on the quote and its meaning can be found here.
Process Talk: Susan Fletcher on Sea Change
Susan Fletcher is no stranger to my bookshelf, to my circle of writer friends and colleagues, or, for that matter, to this blog. I’ve been enchanted by her Journey of the Pale Bear, by the luminous setting and the endearing band of waifs in Falcon in the Glass, and by the spirited character of Marjan in Shadow Spinner. Her Dragon Chronicles (Dragon’s Milk, Flight of the Dragon Kyn, Sign of the Dove, and Ancient, Strange, and Lovely) play out over a timespan that stretches from a Welsh-inspired storyscape all the way to the thump of an egg and the life of a girl in Oregon, in a polluted present time.
Now Susan brings us Sea Change, a reworking of the story of The Little Mermaid. It’s a YA science fiction tale of a gill-breathing girl contending with family and community and love on a climate-impacted Texas coast.
Guest Post: Mima Tipper on Kat’s Greek Summer
Post curated by Jen Breach for Writing With a Broken Tusk
When I began teaching at Vermont College in 2006, my hope was to show my students the gaps between their intentions and the words on the page. I wanted to offer a range of different ways to bridge those gaps, to point out where the draft words were pointing. Then the writer would find her way, would happen upon his own path, would craft the work they wanted to write. Whatever my students might have learned from all this, I’m convinced that reading their work and thinking about it taught me to hold my own work to standards at once generous and critical.
Mima Tipper was my student early in my teaching career. She was among those students who taught me how to teach. So I’m delighted to welcome Mima to Writing With a Broken Tusk to discuss her young YA novel, Kat’s Greek Summer
Border-crossings of Many Kinds in Burn by Patrick Ness
“The enforcers of law in Canada and the United States sometimes coated their bullets in anti-coagulant. Not for when they shot men. For when they shot dragons.”
Set in the Pacific Northwest, Ness’s YA novel Burn takes readers back and forth across the border between countries. But it also crosses the borders between worlds—parallel universes of possibilities playing out in the lives of the characters.
There is No Map for This: Guest Post from Tom Birdseye
This title is a writer’s dream. Take the words “there is no map for this” and you can use them as preface for anything doubtful, anything scary, a day gone wrong, a question unanswered.
You can use them to refer to life itself.
Fertile Ground for a Dialectic
by Tom Birdseye
“History is Key.” Anita Kharbanda’s Lioness of Punjab
How is it that growing up in India, I never heard of the woman at the center of Anita Kharbanda’s Lioness of Punjab? In accounts of the Emperor Aurangzeb’s siege of the Anandpur Sahib gurdwara, her name was curiously missing, just another example of the erasure of women in 19th and 20th century accounts of the past.
Mai Bhago lived in the 18th century, refusing to fit the mold of a domesticated woman. Instead, she mastered the arts of war and took up arms against the Mughal Empire.
Guest Post: Ashley Wilda on The Night Fox
From Ashley Wilda’s guest post: “I don’t know if I can do this.” That’s what I said to my husband after reading the editorial letter for The Night Fox. There was one major problem - I had too many walls.
Process Talk: Cynthia Leitich Smith on Harvest House
Cynthia Leitich Smith (see my post on Sisters of the Neversea) returns to the loving embrace of family and community with her YA novel, Harvest House. I was delighted to see Hughie of Hearts Unbroken take center stage here. I asked Cyn if she’d talk to me about the community these books collectively build and how the writing of Harvest House played out for her.
Process Talk: Nora Shalaway Carpenter & Rocky Callen on Ab(solutely) Normal
Revealing and hiding the self, finding who you are. accepting that self and all that comes along with it. Accepting others. Refusing to be denied. These are all human ways of being and yet for some of us life itself comes along with labels. Sometimes these can limit and wound; at other times, defining a problem can set a person free. Many ways, many voices, burst out of the stories in Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes.
Guest Post: Sathya Achia on In My Hands
Sathya Achia weaves the complexity of gods and demons and magic with the life of 16-year-old Chandra, who’s confronted with rising danger from a supernatural enemy that threatens everyone she loves. Achia’s cultural backdrop is particularly interesting because it’s very specific, drawn from the author’s own ancestral Kodava culture (related to a specific ethnolinguistic group of southern India).
“Selavu is not so much of a weapon as it is a shield. Same with those cuffs they are part of traditional Kodaguru warrior armor,” Gowramma says, forcing me to think, but I can’t because my head is throbbing, and my thoughts are foggy. “Learn to look deeper. Nothing is ever as it seems.”
— In My Hands by Sathya Achia
In this fast-paced tale of curses and battles, but also of family and community and one girl’s struggle to meet her destiny, nothing is as it seems. I’m delighted to welcome Sathya Achia to tell us more about her novel, from Ravens & Roses.
Process Talk: Rajani LaRocca on Red, White, and Whole
I’ve been wanting to write this post ever since I first read Red, White, and Whole, Rajani LaRocca’s novel in verse about grief, loss, and coming of age as a desi kid in America. I asked Rajani if she’d tell me a little about the process of writing this beautifully crafted book, which has been so deservedly recognized (Newbery Honor, Walter Dean Myers Award Winner, Golden Kite Award Winner).
Colonial Connections in Saving Savannah
Tonya Bolden’s YA novel, Saving Savannah, is set at the end of WWI. It’s a meticulously documented novel, the story of 17-year-old Savannah Riddle who finds herself rebelling against the elite Black Washington DC society of her parents.
Power and the Silencing of Activists
Mythology and performance play roles in Oonga, the novel version of a 2013 movie with the same name, which won a 2021 Neev Book Award. The real-life dystopia of corporate plunder and the clash of ideologies lie at the heart of the novel, its storyline delivered in fragments that echo the fracturing of the land, torn up and left bleeding by the mining company. Sometimes fiction can help disseminate the truth about real-world events.
Guest Post: Nandini Bajpai on Sister of the Bollywood Bride
Nandini Bajpai was my student years ago when I taught classes on writing for children on writers.com. (Aside: I’m happy to see that VCFA graduate Kelly Bingham teaches there now.)
Process Talk: Rita Williams-Garcia on A Sitting in St. James
Once in a while you find a book that makes you stop and reread passages for the power of their words.