a Handling review, a Handling teleconference, a memoir conference, and introducing Jesmyn Ward and Terry McMillan

Many thanks to MetroWest Daily News and Rae Padilla Francoeur for this in-depth and considered review of Handling the Truth, which begins like this:

“Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir” by National Book Award finalist Beth Kephart may seem targeted to the writer of memoir. But the subtitle is more encompassing. We are right to expand the scope of the book’s target market to include all students of memoir. Any fan — writer or reader — is going to appreciate “Handling the Truth,” where many of our questions are addressed.—Rae Padilla Francoeur

Thank you, Serena Agusto-Cox, for letting me know.

While I'm here, I'd like to share my excitement over two things happening within the next 24 or so hours, and one thing that will happen next month.

First, I'll be at the Free Library of Philadelphia this evening, introducing National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward and mega-bestseller Terry McMillan—an event that will surely be glorious. Details are here. Join us if you can.

Second, tomorrow I'll be having a tele-conversation with Linda Joy Myers, a memoir expert, writer, teacher, and founder/president of the National Association of Memoir Writers. Linda Joy is a joy—I know this for sure, because of our many conversations, and because she took the time to meet me a few short weeks ago, when I was in Northern California. Here are the details on our forthcoming conversation; we'd love for you to join us.

Third, I know that, once you listen to Linda, you'll be incredibly happy to know that you, too, can meet her in person, when she comes to the Memoir Festival at Rosemont College, on October 20, the details about which are here. I'll be there as well, as well as Robert Waxler and Jerry Waxler.

But first things first. A few words about Linda and tomorrow. Hope to "see" you there.

On Friday of this week I’ll be having a conversation with someone who is very special in the memoir world—someone all of you know well. Linda Joy Myers didn’t just open her heart to me when she heard I’d written a book about the making of memoir, she opened this NAMW world—inviting me into a dialogue, talking with me about stories and how they get made, arranging for our teleconference, and turning anticipatory tweets in the art of haiku. In just a few short days, we will take that conversational leap of faith and talk to each other about the many things that preoccupy us both in the making of memoir. How we capture what we love. How we protect those whom we cherish. Why we cannot write if we do not read, and read widely. What happens when the truth is bruised, when trust is shattered.  

Linda has been teaching memoir for a very long time to a wide range of people. I have been teaching to small classrooms of undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania. We have so much we’re eager to share, and we hope you will join us.

Not long ago, I was standing near Fulton Street in New York City, watching the sun go down on the Brooklyn Bridge. Not far from me were these trapeze artists—or beginning trapeze artists—daring themselves to take a leap, trusting another to catch them. That, I thought, is how writing feels. No matter how many books in, no matter how much we think we know.
We’ll talk about that, too, come Friday.

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Important words about memoir, brought to you by Jesmyn Ward.

For any of those who might need just a bit more proof that it pays to, as I say "soften your stance" when approaching memoir, I offer these words from Jesmyn Ward, whose new memoir, Men We Reaped, is high on my reading list (but not read yet).

The story of Ward's memoir is featured in yesterday's New York Times in a piece by Laura Tillman. I excerpt from the middle of the story. I admire and applaud Ward's desire to find the larger story, for it is the larger story, always, that lies at the heart of memoir. She waited to write until she understood. She waited until she could identify meaning.

From the story:

“Men We Reaped,” to be published on Tuesday by Bloomsbury, is as much an existential detective story as it is a personal history, as Ms. Ward searches for a unifying reason that her brother, Joshua, her cousin C. J. and friends Roger, Demond and Ronald — all young black men — died within a four-year period. 

She writes first about Roger Eric Daniels III, who died of a heart attack at 23 while using cocaine.

“They picking us off, one by one,” a friend tells Ms. Ward in the book, as they watch the hearse leave Mr. Daniels’s home. 

Who, she wonders, are “they”? 

“Was there a larger story that I was missing as all these deaths accumulated, as those I loved died?”

“Men We Reaped” is that larger story. With a novelist’s skill, Ms. Ward mines her memories of the men, like the girlhood crush she had on Ronald, or the night she enlisted a friend to wake her sister, who was dating C. J., to break the news of his death. What she finds are threads of the past that linger in the collective present, specifically the role that the South’s legacy of racism has played in how these young men lived and died.

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In the stillness of now

I try not to let things get beyond me in this life, but the last few weeks were dense with work and pressure.  I paid no attention to clocks, working as much as I could to complete a corporate project that has meant a lot to me.  I wrote a few talks, prepared a workshop session, took care of some magazine work for clients.

In between was a certain book stock crisis,  Google's announcement that my account (translation: my blog) had been violated and was no longer accessible, a lost camera, and lost glasses.  Piles grew tidal around me (which is not a happy thing for a neat freak).  The refrigerator emptied (save for a bottle of milk and a quarter stick of butter, perhaps a square of cheese, jello made in a moment of hunger).  Bills sat unpaid. I wore clothes from another era because the right-era clothes were, shall we say, indisposed.  I answered emails many days late, with what, I am sure, was an humiliating array of mistakes.  There should be a book:  Beth's Email Mistakes.  The sequel:  Beth's Blog Mistakes. 

And books—at least a dozen books—came into the house and were placed in a growing teeter on the living room table.  Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise.  A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants.  Peter Spiegelman's Thick as Thieves.  Philip Schultz's My Dyslexia.  Benjamin Markovits's Childish Loves.  Marc Schuster's The Grievers.  Ann Hite's Ghost on Black Mountain.  Anna Lefler's Chicktionary.  Roy Jacobsen's Child Wonder.  Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones.  Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document.  Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.  More.

Can I just tell you how much I have missed reading books? Finding my way into the thick of a story?  Decoding the music others make?

Today, on this freakishly autumnal snowy day, I will join my family of dance friends in the city to celebrate the joint 70 year old birthdays of a still-swinging couple.  We'll stay overnight and brunch the next day with beloved friends in a white city, then head to a museum.  I'm going to take one of these books with me.  And then, come Sunday night, leaning into Monday morning, I am going to lie on a couch and do nothing but turn pages and return to the reader I am.

Thank you for putting up with all the recent launch news of You Are My Only.  I'm eager to once again spend my time here talking about the books of others.  That is why I created this space.  That is what makes me happy.

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