Appleton and Tasha, BookBrowse and Tamara, Serena and Small Damages

Two years ago, in Appleton, WI, I had what will always remain one of the happiest few days in my writing life.  I'd been invited to the Appleton Book Festival, and I had nine official events in two-and-half days—teaching memoir in libraries, talking about the future with high school students, standing on big stages in middle school auditoriums to address entire student bodies, taking over a lovely green-rugged library, working one-on-one with rising poets, talking to the darling editors of school newspapers, consulting with a boy who wanted me to write his personal story.  Everywhere I went I was received with such open-hearted goodness, and one morning, in the elevator, I met Ted Kooser, that laureate poet, and told him how I had read his poems to my mother during her final days.  I loved Appleton with a passion. I walked her river in the few hours when I wasn't teaching and ate alone at night in a restaurant that soon felt like my own.  These were, in so many ways, perfect days.

Yesterday, my friend Serena Agusto-Cox wrote to tell me that an Appleton librarian named Tasha (of Waking Brain Cells) had read Small Damages and had very kind things to say.  (Serena sends word of kind reviews from time to time, and because of her, I get to thank the reviewers.)  Tasha's beautiful words are deeply moving; they epitomize the graciousness of her city.

Late last night, meanwhile, I received an email from Tamara Smith, who had interviewed me so graciously about the role of landscape in my work (and mind) a few weeks ago.  Tamara's BookBrowse review of Small Damages had gone live, and she was writing to let me know.  The review is breathtaking—and it, too, says as much about the person behind the review as it does about the story I tried to tell.  Perhaps even more.

A morning hug, to you all.

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Landscape, Soul, Story: An Interview, A Review

A few weeks ago, Tamara Smith, the co-creator of Kissing the Earth (you will love this site, when you visit it) wrote to me about landscape. Landscape is central in Tamara's own books, she said, and having read Small Damages for BookBrowse, Tamara sensed that it mattered to me as well.  A conversation ensued—deep and ranging, thanks to Tamara's smart questions—and I am grateful to be able to share the whole here, on Kissing the Earth.

A fragment:

KTE: You told me that, for you, landscape is a character.  It is for me too. Can you explain that a bit here?  Why is this so?  How do you manifest this belief in your work?

BK: Landscape shapes us.  It defines our legs and lungs as we walk through it.  It shapes the way we see, how we define horizons, what seems impossibly far away and what seems gratifyingly or frighteningly near.  Landscape is proximity, and it is distance.  It is another way of measuring time.  And so, in much of my work—the memoirs (especially my book about marriage and El Salvador), the river book, a YA novel that takes place in Juarez, a YA book that takes place in a garden (and Barcelona and Portugal), another YA novel that takes place in Centennial Philadelphia, and of course Small Damages—I am placing my characters down among very specific places and learning how it shapes them.

Tamara, thank you.  The conversation was a privilege.  Kenzie's landscape was inspired by Arenales, the cortijo I visited in southern Spain, among other sites.  I am yearning, deeply, to return.

I was all set to post this link to my conversation with Tamara when that incredibly generous sneak, Serena Agusto-Cox of Savvy Verse & Wit, sent me a late-night email with a link that would not, she said, go live until today. Well.  In my humble opinion, this blogger, wife, mom, and full-time employee (how she does it all, I do not know) has done so much for me and my books that I felt embarrassed to imagine that she had spent the time to read another Kephart book, and to reflect on it.  When I read Serena's review of Small Damages, I felt even more—I don't know the word—for Serena clearly put so much heart and time and thought into her words.  Perhaps she did this at 2 AM, or perhaps she did it on her lunch break.  I don't know when, or how, but Serena, I am grateful. 

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