Events

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 …

Last year, a few months after the publication of my first novel, I began writing my second book. I thought it would be easier this time, as I was armed with knowledge and experience and wouldn’t make the rookie mistakes …

Over the past five years, I have written about 300,000 words of my current novel, and I have thrown out about 299,998 of them. This process has been one that I have carefully cultivated and developed, and in all honesty, …

In the months before my first book, a novel, went to print, my publisher offered to send a few preview copies to friends and colleagues in the writing world in the hope of generating early ‘buzz’.

I was both delighted …

When the Twin Towers were burning in New York, I spent the night in bed with my mother. I was 33 years of age. While the two incidences are unrelated, I could hardly believe when I woke the next day …