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.
Narrative Momentum in Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Thank you to Sarah Ellis for recommending Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. It’s a short novella set in Ireland in the days of the Magdalene laundries, but that is not what it is about. Rather, it is the story of a man who deals in coal, a man with an ordinary life, a life that has turned out well, a man with no more than ordinary worries—but one who has nonetheless carried a hole in his heart since his childhood. See Keegan’s interview with another Claire, Claire Armitstead, in The Guardian, in which she expresses a refusal to condemn any of her characters, no matter how terrible their actions might seem.