What a writer does and doesn’t do all day

Ruth HartleyArt Process, Book Publishing, Books by Ruth Hartley, Education, Imagination, Music, Promotion, Reading, Writing Process1 Comment

All beginnings are hard – just look at the time already! It’s a good morning’s work when I sit down at my laptop in my pyjamas, before breakfast, ignore my husband, begin at once to write, and then carry on for hours. There were many a good night’s work done when, as a single woman, I wrote after supper, then […]

Tears, fears, longing, belonging and living.

Ruth HartleyApartheid, Citizenship, Colonialism, Creativity, Displacement, Family, Feminism, Freedom Fighters, Human rights, Identity, Justice, Migration, Poetry, Politics, Power, Race, Racism, Religion, South Africa, Southern Africa, Visual Arts, War, Zambia2 Comments

Why I cried about who I might become “Why do you want to become a French citizen?” I was asked this question at the end of a gruelling two hour naturalisation interview. I burst into tears. “It’s such a difficult and important decision,” I replied, sniffling. “I’ve had to leave too many places I thought of as home. I want […]

The story of my stories — writing and publishing

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Books by Ruth Hartley, Creativity, Identity, Memoir, Poetry, Politics, Reading, Southern Africa, The Love and Wisdom Crimes, The Shaping of Water, The Tin Heart Gold Mine, The White and Black Blues, Writing Process, Zambia10 Comments

The storyteller’s story It is time to tell of my own journey as a writer from the young poet in 1961 to the writer of today. It’s a story of both writing and publishing. I am in the process of publishing three more books right now. They are a novel, The Love and Wisdom Crimes, a memoir, When I was […]

Tanvir Bush, writer, her readers and reviewers

Ruth HartleyBook Launch, Book Publishing, Books by Ruth Hartley, Festival, Nuanced Thinking, Politics, Reading, The Tin Heart Gold Mine, Writing Process2 Comments

Tanvir Bush’s novel CULL has been published My daughter, Tanvir Bush, is thrilled to have arrived at CULL’s date of publication and then discover this wonderful display of her books in the lovely Corsham Bookshop. These independent bookshops are greatly loved and prized by both writers and readers. The bookshop staff do great work in getting readers and books together […]

My family and other writers

Ruth Hartley Storytelling, Book Publishing, Books by Ruth Hartley, Creativity, Family, South Africa, The Love and Wisdom Crimes, Writing Process2 Comments

The unbearable lightness of writing I don’t like all Milan Kundera‘s novels but I did like his The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  I  joke about the lightness of writing, of course. Writing makes my spirit light even when it is an unbearably heavy task. Being part of a family is both heavy and light work. My daughter, Tanvir Bush, is […]