Category Archives: Guest Author
A Writer Reads: Trash as Literary Treasure
(A post from guest author Mary Burns) What is literature going to do with the no garbage movement? In the third volume of My Struggle, Karl Ove Knausgaard leaves indelible images of the dump where he and his childhood friends found stacks of … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: Why Adam Nicolson Matters
(A post from guest author Mary Burns) Adam Nicolson’s book about Homer, The Mighty Dead, is like a telescope trained on the very distant past. Using clues from ancient languages, from burial mounds, from unearthed treasure and other evidence, he dates … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: The “Sound” of a Narrative Voice
(A post from guest author Mary Burns) The teachers who drilled the rules of punctuation into students—commas mean a pause, period a full stop—were not fiction writers. It’s not that black and white. The music of the writing comes, of … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: Watch That Tone
(A post by guest author Mary Burns) I used to like the work of the American writer Anne Tyler, especially her Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, which I passed along to friends. I was inspired by the way she was … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: The Magic of Imagination
A post by guest author Mary Burns One thing I like about Daniel Alarcon’s book, At Night We Walk in Circles, is the way he interchanges characters he means us to see as real with the characters in a play … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: Writing From Life
(a post from guest author, Mary Burns) Many writers use material from their own lives as the stuff of their novels, but there have always been some who rely on reality more than others and do less to disguise it. … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: Behind the Microscope and Under It: Women and Girl Scientists
(a post from guest author, Mary Burns) Two fascinating novels I read recently feature women scientists, Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes and The Signature of All Things, by Jennifer Gilbert, whose popular memoir, Eat, Pray Love was made into a … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: Finding Favourites
(a post from guest author, Mary Burns) A favourite book store in New York City is the Housing Works Café Bookstore, a social enterprise that is part of the Housing Works non-profit. It is staffed for the most part by … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: What I Did This Summer
(a post from guest author Mary Burns) Do I read more in Summer? Probably. The light lasts longer, the warm temperatures encourage sloth. I see more of friends for al fresco meals, and they often send me home with their … Continue reading
A Writer Reads: From the Old Conservative Quebec to Crazy Paris
(a post from guest author Mary Burns) I chose Anne Hébert’s later novels to accompany me on my recent sail out to the Gulf of St Lawrence because, having read Kamouraska in the 70’s or 80’s, I remembered her as … Continue reading
Melissa's Booklover Musings 