The writer laid bare

Journaling the new book

Daylesford – Musk House Nov 11, 2016

5.26 and close to knock off time. Splendid sun shining on the deck before me and the sheep and the grape vine and I’m all chilled and stretched and …

By nature, I am a confessional writer. The more difficult, dramatic, my life is – the better I actually fare. Artistically that is. And yet… It has taken me twenty years to dare to tell one of the most transformative …

It was only after several years of studying the Armenian genocide, in an effort to write about my family’s history, that I learned about the terrorist groups. There were two – the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, …

When I sat down to write my second novel, The Orange Grove, it was the culmination of my love and preoccupation with everything French. I had studied the language for years and visited France numerous times. Yet what really …

I’ve always loved the personal essay genre, especially because of the freedom embedded within it. A personal essayist can say whatever they wish directly; unlike in fiction, there is no need to couch their views, or research, in an imagined …

Once, when my mother-in-law was murdered by her husband, I dealt with the shock and subsequent anger of it all by writing it out of me. Dubious poetry poured from every pore, and my freelance writing for newspapers and magazines …