Words on a Page

  The Portsmouth Authors Collective seeks to put the spotlight on local talent who live in or take inspiration from the city and its surrounding areas. Today’s interview is with the poet and debut novelist Tina Cathleen MacNaughton.   Author Bio: Tina Cathleen MacNaughton has written and published four books: a collection of poetry entitled On the Shoulders of Lions (The Choir Press, 2021); two children’s books, When the Elves Rescued Christmas and Santa’s Still Asleep (WriteRhymes, 2020 and 2021), and a novel with a 1980s music background Delphy Rose – the Girl Who Wrote Songs (Troubador). ~ Loree:  Welcome to my blog, Tina. And thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. Every time I scroll through Facebook, lately, I see that another of your poems has been accepted for publication. What is your biggest achievement to date? Tina: Finishing and publishing my novel Delphy Rose . It was my dream to publish a novel before I was fifty. I am eight years late, but w...

When historical research is used to recreate the past on the page, it can offer us a view into a vanished world. It can educate us about facts while entertaining us with narrative. When historical research is used creatively, by exploring what is not known as well as what is, it can offer powerful insights not only into the past but also into our contemporary world. As a PhD student engaged in the creative use of research into the history of the American West I came eagerly to Jim Goar’s  The Louisiana Purchase (sadly now out of print).  In the Author’s Note at the front of the book Goar sets the context for what follows: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the United States acquired that portion of the continent, south of British-held territories, which at its widest point extended from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Commonly known as the Louisiana Purchase , this vast area of some 820,000 square miles was largely unexplored. In 1804, American Presid...

It is often only at the end of a writer’s career that it becomes possible to see how their work has developed, how the focus has narrowed or expanded, how the writer’s thought process has shifted.  In the sixteen years since Sherman Alexie won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Book of Fiction for the ground-breaking and controversial short story collection Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), he has published a further seventeen books including poetry, novels and short fiction.  Thanks to this rapidly-expanding catalogue, we are able to witness Alexie’s development in almost real time. From the very start, Alexie has explored the question of what it is to be ‘Indian’ in contemporary America, both on and off the Spokane Reservation.  Ten Little Indians (2003), however, began to shift away from the antagonistic cultural tribalism of earlier books.  Ethnicity was no longer the controlling force in the lives of his characters.  They were people ...