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.
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.