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.
Empathy and Breaking the Rules in Cry by Alisa Valdés
I was a part-time cashier in a rare-books store when I died…
That’s the funny, idiosyncratic voice of the first-person narrator in Cry by Alisa Valdés. Altagracia Martínez (known as Grace) is a 16-year old bisexual goth filmmaker in Austin, Texas. She’s also battling internal demons, on account of having lost her own mother to suicide two years before the story begins. Grace isn’t wild about the “stenchmother” who is her father’s new wife, so there’s plenty of conflict brewing.