Israel/Hamas – with blood and fire or with doves

Ruth HartleyColonialism, Conflict, Displacement, Feminism, Human rights, Justice, Migration, Politics, Power, Racism, Refugee, War5 Comments

The right side in the Israel/Hamas war. The whole world is engaged with, but divided over the Middle East war. It’s a risk to venture an opinion, but it seems to me that there is only one right side and one way to protect children and that is to find peace for both sides. What I’ve learned in the war-torn […]

On being non-gendered

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Feminism, Installations2 Comments

I read this wonderful piece in the marvellous The Marginalian compiled by Maria Popova and thought with delight that it may explain me and perhaps other women of my generation.  Ursula Le Guin writes: “I am a man. Now you may think I’ve made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I’m trying to fool you, because […]

Saving my stories

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Art by Ruth Hartley, Book Publishing, Books by Ruth Hartley, Digital Publishing, Displacement, Dust and Rain, Exile, Feminism, Freedom Fighters, Promotion, Self-Publishing, The Colourless Child, The Love and Wisdom Crimes, The Shaping of Water, The Tin Heart Gold Mine, When I Was Bad, When We Were Wicked, Zambia1 Comment

What are the risks to my stories Saving my stories required an agent, high-profile reviews, media links, book launches, hard work and lots of money. I had none of those and I had to save my stories myself. Publishers told me that if a book is not successfully marketed in the six months after publication, it will die. As a […]

Poetry and people and the place of women

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Books by Ruth Hartley, Creative Writing, Creativity, Feminism, Imagination, Poetry, Songs, The Spiral-Bound Notebooks, Writing Process2 Comments

Poets are an elite species Where did the idea come that poets are a separate kind of human that is more aesthetically refined, sensitive, better educated and therefore part of an elite? Where did the idea come from that we can’t sing unless taught how to do it? Is this why some of us avoid trying to write poetry and […]

Freedom of Speech and truth-telling

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Book Publishing, Conflict, Creativity, Feminism, Human rights, Nuanced Thinking, Power2 Comments

The BBC Reith Lectures I listened to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Reith Lecture on Freedom of Speech on the BBC and I knew I was once again in a world of curiosity and questioning where books are open doors to the whole world. As Adichie said, the essential freedom to be creative is only possible if there is freedom of speech. […]