My Writerly Life

Tag: People

  • CITY MOUSE & COUNTRY MOUSE

    Years back, I was living just down the road from my cousin—the inspiration for the lead character in my novel, WRANGLE. The blogsite, Women Writing the West, was kind enough to print this post about Sharon’s ranching life, and I’m sure they would not object to a reprint: My cousin Sharon McAmis was the inspiration…

  • FROM CAIRO TO TEXAS

    As a former journalist, I am interested in the career of others in the profession—and that of Lawrence Wright has confounded me for some time. Why does the author of the internationally acclaimed book, The Looming Tower, choose to write two politically charged books on Texas in later years? That strikes me as a strange…

  • 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…

  • 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…