There’s probably no better teacher of creative writing – specially the crime genre – than an author who is also a medical doctor who has performed over 200 autopsies, some forensic in nature.
Meet Bradley Harper – poet, short story writer, essayist and novelist who has landed a two-book deal with Seventh Street Books, part of Prometheus Books, which resides within the Penguin Random House umbrella – whom ‘Ireland Writing Retreat’ is proud to announce is among the tutors at this September’s retreat in Donegal, Ireland.
Bradley, a former professor, also writes a recurring series of articles on forensics for the Sisters in Crime (Guppy Chapter) writers’ organization.
Among the magazines which have accepted Bradley’s short stories are the ‘Sherlock Holmes Magazine of Mystery’ and ‘Strand Magazine.’ One essay Bradley composed was about the suicide of a soldier and how he used that as motivation to walk the Camino to Santiago. It was selected for radio presentation.
Bradley’s novel entitled ‘A Knife in the Fog: A Mystery Featuring Margaret Harkness and Arthur Conan Doyle’ set in late 19thcentury England is set for official release on October 2.
Bradley, part Scot, part Cherokee, coined the catchphrase. ‘Plot is what happens. Story is why you care’ and he will explain exactly what he means by that at September’s week-long retreat.
Interestingly, one of Bradley’s heroines is Margaret Harkness, (1854-1923), a journalist, social and political activist, fiction writer and traveler.
Harkness’s best-known works are the six complete novels she published between 1887 and 1905, on the subject of the lives of urban workers and living and working conditions in city slums. As well as producing investigative journalism on these subjects, she frequented the British Museum Reading Room, actively supported the Matchwomen’s Strike of 1888 and the Dockworkers’ Strike of 1889, was associated with important political figures including Eleanor Marx and Beatrice Potter Webb and was briefly a member of Friedrich Engels’s social circle in London.
In her later career, she was writer for periodicals in Australia, known for her travel writing and fiction on India and Ceylon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
An experienced teacher, Bradley told organisers of ‘Ireland Writing Retreat’ modestly, “Having just recently emerged from the slush pile myself, perhaps I can offer aspiring authors my experience and philosophy, and give them hope along with instruction.”
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This Artist's Retreat is available for rent this summer,
in the same village where Black Sea Writing Retreat took place