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.
Process Talk: Karthika Naïr on Electric Birds of Pothakudi
Electric Birds of Pothakudi is a picture book based on the true story of a villager in south India who took extraordinary action to protect a pair of nesting birds. The book is an ode to its rural setting as well as to an act of compassion and really, you can’t disentangle the two. The titular birds (oriental magpie robins for all you English-speaking birders), are known in the region as vannathikuruvi. The name derives from the Tamil word for a person who washes clothes on a riverbank or lakeshore, as flocks of these passerine birds are seen in such places. Bird names in southern India are not only colloquial but utterly embedded in the landscape and somehow this story manages to capture that essence.