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: 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.