The Literary Life and me

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Books by Ruth Hartley, Cartoons, Comic Strip, Creative Writing, Creativity, Dust and Rain, Graphic Novel, Reading, Writing ProcessLeave a Comment

Posy Simmonds Posy Simmonds is a brilliant artist, acute satirist and eye-watering cartoonist who, in Literary Life Revisited, exposes authors, publishers and the book trade. Her work is currently on display in the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She has the essential gift of making you laugh at yourself. Funny Feminist Cartoons I became addicted to Posy Simmonds’s Mrs Weber’s Diary […]

The stories behind my stories

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Art by Ruth Hartley, Book Publishing, Books by Ruth Hartley, Children's Stories, Dust and Rain, Memoir, Poetry, Reading, Self-Publishing, Short Stories, The Love and Wisdom Crimes, The Shaping of Water, The Spiral-Bound Notebooks, The Tin Heart Gold Mine, When I Was Bad, When We Were WickedLeave a Comment

Right now, my stories are in danger of vanishing from the world. Does that matter? Ought I stop them from disappearing? Does anyone care, except me? This is how I often feel, as I know many authors do, after a long day of marketing discussions, or time spent following up with publishing and distribution contacts, rather than writing! My stories […]

What are novels for?

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Books by Ruth Hartley, Imagination, Writing Process1 Comment

Ah – this was a fun coincidence. I was starting a post about my books when this article by Jacob Brogan appeared in The Washington Post. He writes about Joseph Epstein, an eminent American literary critic, who has written a book that asks if we need novels. Well – I need novels – good ones of course – and I […]

Four children alone in the Amazon Rain forest

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Children's Stories, Climate change, Dust and Rain, Journey, Zambia3 Comments

There was good news. Four children had survived a plane crash and 40 days wandering in the Amazon jungle.They were children who had knowledge and experience of nature but they were weak and hungry when they were found. This is a profound lesson for all humans. We are human animals. We are part of nature and our survival depends on […]

A bad Mother and an African village

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Creative Writing, Memoir, Short Stories2 Comments

Victims The media are currently running stories about victims of poor parenting. Everyone has had mothers and fathers and was parented somehow by somebody. We know ourselves through understanding our families and parents. Unquestionably there are children who are victims and who have suffered, but there are also those who survive enormous difficulties and who still manage to forgive and […]