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Elaine PinkertonE-mail: Elaine2005@comcast.net New Video Interviews From
Calcutta with Love is available See the Elaine Pinkerton Blog! October 5 10:00 a.m. -Amelia Island Book Festival/ Amelia Island, Florida --Elaine Pinkerton will teach a session titled Harvesting Your Family Tree This workshop offers inspiration and practical help to begin or develop a memoir or family history project. A hands-on session, attendees may bring a few family stories, journals, sampling of family letters and records and be prepared to write. For information, visit www.bookisland.org/schedule/writeit.htm Read the interview from PAC-8 TV station, Los Alamos, NM. This is a Word document. BEAST OF BENGAL and FROM CALCUTTA WITH LOVE are now available in Jaipur, India at
Writing is my life. This passion began at age ten when I wrote plays, short mysteries and (quite jejune) poetry. My parents' gift to me of a diary began a lifetime of journaling, a method useful today for launching literary projects. Back in North Carolina and Virginia where I grew up, opportunities for writing abounded. I edited and wrote most of "The Seventh Grade Scoop." Later, I produced short stories for my high school magazine "The Bumblebee." College found me writing literary criticism, an important part of being an English major at the University of Virginia. My master's thesis in English was "Determinism in Mark Twain's Puddn'head Wilson. Even today, I love Mark Twain and this part of Americana. The middle of my writing career could best be described as "journalistic." Since the 1970s, I've freelanced for local, regional and national publications, including Family Circle, New Mexico Magazine, Runner's World, On the Run and the New Mexico Traveler. I made my living as a technical writer/editor for Los Alamos National Laboratory in the1980s and early 90s. With technical writing, however, I felt my creativity suffocating. Writing around the edges of my day job, I produced two guidebooks inspired by the natural beauty of northern New Mexico and the Southwest as well as my love of the outdoors: Santa Fe on Foot and The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle. For the past few years, writing has centered on World War II and India. The reason? My late father, Richard Beard. This extraordinary man not only believed in my writing, he was my greatest inspiration. Before he and my mother adopted my brother and me (we were "goodbye babies," born in the middle of the war), Richard served at the 142nd General Hospital in India as a clinical psychologist for the Army Air Force. After his death in 1997, I discovered a voluminous WWII correspondence. From Calcutta, India and Findlay, Ohio, he and my mother wrote letters depicting both war front and home front. The unifying thread in all the letters was their deep love and devotion.
From Calcutta with Love: The WWII Letters of Richard and Reva Beard, a compilation of the best of the letters as well as a history of the China-Burma-India theater of the war: This is the book that resulted from my exploration of family and world history. From Calcutta with Love has been featured on Book TV, presented as a play, and continues to find an enthusiastic audience. Beast of Bengal, my newest book-in-progress, segues from the letters book, but unlike From Calcutta with Love, is a work of fiction. Stay tuned to my web site on readsouthwest.com for exact publication date. Meanwhile, I will be providing excerpts online. |
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