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. The blog name refers to the mythical pact made between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of 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 and still miraculously in print.
Since March, writer and former student Jen Breach has helped me manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog. They have lined up and conducted author/illustrator interviews and invited and coordinated guest posts. That support has helped me get through weeks when I’ve been in edit-copyedit-proofing mode, and it’s also introduced me to writers and books I might not have found otherwise. Our overlapping interests have led to posts for which I might not have had the time or attention-span. It’s the beauty of shared circles—Venn diagrams, anyone?
Guest Post: Letting Characters Lead the Way by Saumiya Balasubramaniam
Happy coincidence, or inspired planning? On April 2, Groundwood Books will publish two picture books set in India: my Look! Look! of which some more here and still more to come, and When I Visited Grandma by Saumiya Balasubramaniam. Since our books share a publisher and a book release date, I thought I’d ask Saumiya to write a guest post about the making of this book.
Caveat Auctor
When John Zubrzycki’s history of Indian magic was published in 2018, Michael Dirda of The Washington Post wrote a grumpy review with a scattering of admiration. Dirda’s criticism cited typos, misspellings, garbled sentences, redundancies—in other words, slovenly editing
Here’s a grudgingly admiring snippet, the annoyance aimed at the publisher, Oxford University Press:
Oxford’s delinquency is particularly annoying because Zubrzycki, an expert on South Asian history, clearly worked hard to produce what is, despite its textual irritations, a valuable and entertaining book.
