My Writerly Life

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  • CREATIVITY & THE CLASSROOM

    When it comes to creative classroom experiences, one would be hard-pressed to find a teacher who delivers that better than Robyn Carter, a writer and prolific innovator who has her fifth graders producing graphic novels and videos. I am in awe of the results—an explosion of imaginative ideas, sights and sounds. I have been wanting…

  • HARDING: THIS OTHER EDEN

    Paul Harding roared onto the literary scene in 2010 by winning the Pulitzer for his first novel, Tinkers—a beautiful work of art marked by its rhythmic prose reflective of his musical background. Harding’s third novel, This Other Eden, certainly maintains his reputation for lyrical, complex writing that forces you past the surface plot into deeper…

  • THE CRAFT OF WRITING

    Let me start with an admission that no writing conference would dare ask me to lecture because I am far too blunt with young writers. The average conference wants every kind of budding author to come, enjoy, return; I want to share the truth about the rigors of our craft. I have this firm belief…

  • ROSSETTI’S GOBLIN MEN

    Almost 30 years ago I came upon a tiny “gift book” containing Christina Rossetti’s 567-line ballad Goblin Market, illustrated by the art of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Back then I was a businesswoman, years removed from my early college classes in English literature, so I did not tend to “analyze” my reads quite so…

  • GET BACK ON THE HORSE

    Because of my Texas beginnings, I suppose, I have this fascination with westerners who have a rural or ranching background, move out and up in the city environment, but retain their love for and lessons learned in their beginnings—and I often write about western women. When Betty Sue Morris was a young girl, she was…

  • SEBASTIAN BARRY’S SPATE OF WORDS

    It is difficult to explain why I like Sebastian Barry’s mournful Booker Prize-nominated On Canaan’s Side better than his current Booker-nominated Old God’s Time, and why all his other lauded works fall somewhere in between, but let me start by saying that Barry is masterful at the craft of writing. In the past I have…

  • IT ALL STARTED WITH GOLDIE RIPPER

    Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog, “My Writerly Life,” which pretty much encapsulates my nearly 84 years. I hope you will read along and perhaps “Follow” my weekly posts, and share your own reading habits and inspirations. I was not born knowing I was a writer, but I was an inveterate reader from a…

  • COMING SOON . . .

    No, not the circus, or a movie, or a new hotel—a new blog entitled My Writerly Life, with squibs about literature, the arts, people, things that inspire me. An introductory blog will magically appear 9/13, and a review of Sebastian Barry’s new Booker Prize nominated novel on 9/17. But you do not have to remember…