Elan Durham @europabridge1

Writer, Editor, and Traveler in Ipswich, Massachusetts

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To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends … Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, 1750

©Borrowed Light opens in 1968 with Jean and the Turner family crammed inside their Chevy Impala to fetch the oldest son from Hollywood’s city jail. But it’s a bumpy ride on Route 66, as Bill, a WWII Veteran and certified speed demon burns rubber every chance he gets, and Violet, the Microbiologist Mom hides more than keen eyesight behind Jackie-O sunglasses.

Jean, the youngest daughter and novel's narrator suffers a mishap in the Grand Canyon rescued by a Scottish hiking party, and Ernie, freed from jail after 5 months remains incarcerated inside. A series of comic mishaps and crises on the road test the Turners' resources against the Sixties' endless freedoms to find the garden-filled leafy burbs of Charleston's beachside communities challenging enough.

Borrowed Light spans some 45 years of American life with 12 interconnected stories to explore personal freedom, the meaning of family, the requirements of home, and cost of enduring love.

Morgan Reed, Jean's British boyfriend from university becomes an emblem of expatriate reinvention; Veteran British actor Teddy Fortesque, Lucien, an esteemed photographer from Prague, Isabelle Campbell, Producer and Actor, Jules & Leslie Cunningham, Hikers, Southern Architect Harlan Harrison, Sara and Spencer Partridge, Bon Vivants of Charleston, Tiggy Pritchard of the Gardening Club, Sophie and Matt, London columnist, and UK Estate Agent, and Cornish Hoteliers Nicola and Tremayne Lanyon fill the novel's pages with personal stories and local lore knitting together the United States with Great Britain and the world.

Freedom of the Press means the freedom to criticize and oppose. George Orwell

©Adventures in Paradise explores the world of London's historic #Hackgate media scandal with Journo Aurora Blunton and Hospitality Mogul Clive Reade as they revive the Screwball Comedies of Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn. In reality, Hackgate closed London's oldest tabloid, while AIP opens with a cracking ensemble cast of fascinating characters, a cheeky hint of HBO's Succession, third-act dinner party surprises, and cocktail-hour hijinks from Clive, Aurora, and the gang in Chelsea.

Both novel and screenplay are copyrighted and registered with the Library of Congress, WGA East, and The Vault, London.

Thanks for visiting and please consider supporting my work through one of the links below.

  • Work
    • Writer-Screenwriter-Editor
  • Education
    • MFA
    • University of North Carolina
    • University of Oregon
    • University of Alabama
    • Louisiana State University
Recommendations
Borrowed Light concerns the life of Elan Durham's smart, fierce, and witty heroine Jean Turner, and it is a full-blown, wonderful ... sometimes hilarious, sometimes scathing, and gorgeous sail through a life, which includes a childhood in South, lives in Los Angeles and New York, and then a luminous if ambivalent and hard-earned redemption back in the South and beyond. Elan Durham's stories are some of the most stunning I've read in a fiction of surpassing beauty and humour.
Rebecca Lee, Professor and author of Bobcat, and The City is a Rising Tide.
Elan has taught a variety of writing courses, literature, and Women's Studies courses, and her breadth of knowledge and abilities is impressive. Additionally, she is an innovative teacher; she works hard, loves to conference with students, and creates imaginative assignments and classroom activities that speak to her abilities as an innovative, caring instructor of writing.
Don Bushman, Professor, English UNCW
Elan Durham's guidance and example have been noted by students as inspirational and significant in their lives. I consider this tribute to be very important, as it underscores the teaching mission of the university and the value of her work with students.
P Nelson Reid, Ph.D. UNCW Dean of Students