four women: looking back on conversations with Dani Shapiro, Liz Rosenberg, Stacey D'Erasmo, and Debbie Levy

My journey these past many months has been extraordinary—taking me to places far and wide, introducing me to writers and readers who embody the best of the now. For all of you who have taken the time to share some time with me: thank you.

I've been especially blessed by the opportunity to spend time in conversation with leading writers and thinkers. And so today, as I look toward one final Handling the Truth event in the year of 2013 (more on that below), I want to say a special thank you to four women with whom I shared the stage and who were everything I'd hoped they'd be. And more.

Debbie Levy, author, most recently, of Imperfect Spiral, with whom I spent a sacred Saturday afternoon, in Alexandria, VA, talking about life and birds and truth in fiction. We gave our audience a few writing exercises; we engaged; we learned. And I adore Debbie Levy—an amazing talent and gift to younger readers.

Stacey D'Erasmo, author, most recently, of The Art of Intimacy, with whom I shared a stage at the Decatur Book Festival. Fiercely smart, hugely generous, Stacey is a writer I have read for a long time. I could not believe my great good fortune of just sitting and talking craft with her.

Liz Rosenberg, author, most recently, of The Laws of Gravity, who traveled all the way from her home in Binghamton to Mount Airy to spend a Saturday evening in a crowded independent bookstore to talk with me and with the audience about the book life. Liz and I have had a longstanding correspondence. How wonderful it was to spend some time together.

Dani Shapiro, author, most recently, of Still Writing, with whom I had the enormous pleasure of speaking last evening on behalf of First Person Arts. Dani and I had only met briefly once before. We'd talked once on the phone, emailed occasionally. But last night, in an intimate space, we shared a microphone and a passion for this writing life, and I felt as if I'd known her all my life. Dani traveled far to come to my city. She arrived in the company of her equally wonderful husband, the journalist and filmmaker Michael Maren, whose new film, "The Short History of Decay" (click on the link to see the trailer!), will be the featured film at several upcoming festivals. Philadelphians were blessed to have them both in the house. And so was I.

Thank you. And. That last 2013 Handling the Truth event? It's a First Person Arts Festival workshop called The Spices of Life. We're going to remember and write a kitchen scene. There are a few spaces left. Join us. 

Finally, that photograph above was taken by my friend Melissa Sarno on Saturday afternoon in the New York Public Library, following a really beautiful Bank Street morning. Jennifer M. Brown of Bank Street: You care about all the things that matter. You have a lot on your shoulders. Thank you for taking care of me.

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The week that was, the events that will be, an A.S. King road trip, and thank you, Library Matters (and Serena)

It has been a remarkable week of sun, then clouds, now storm. In the midst of it all I traveled to Rosemont College to meet with Anne Willkomm's class to talk about the making of Dangerous Neighbors, my centennial Philadelphia novel. (Bonus: I got to see the program's fearless leader, Carla Spataro.)

On Tuesday evening I was at Villanova University, at a program honoring the memory of my mother. (Bonus, Colum McCann was in the house.)

Yesterday morning, I had the great privilege and fun of joining my dear friend Elizabeth Mosier in her Bryn Mawr College classroom to talk about both Dangerous Neighbors and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. (Bonus: Any time spent with Elizabeth Mosier is a bonus.)

Yesterday, I was also featured on Book Country, in a discussion about researching memoir.

Tomorrow I'll be at Rosemont College for the Push to Publish event, joining friends on a memoir panel. We encourage you to join us.

Next weekend, two great things are happening: On Saturday, October 19, I'm reading with Liz Rosenberg at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore, in Mount Airy, PA. The event begins at 5 PM. All thanks to Minter Krozer for making that possible. Liz will read from The Laws of Gravity. I will read from—well, I'm still figuring that out. But Handling the Truth will definitely be part of my story. I may debut Going Over, my Berlin novel, just for the fun of it as well.

On Sunday, October, 20, I'm participating in the Memoir Summit at Rosemont College with Linda Joy Meyers, Robert Waxler, and Jerry Waxler. This event, featuring four free workshops, is free and open to the public, and according to Fearless Carla Spataro, registrations are coming in from all up and down the east coast.

Finally, on Monday, October 21, the amazing A.S. King and I are taking a road trip to western Pennsylvania, where we will have a chance to meet with the wonderful librarians of Pennsylvania. Amy won the Carolyn W. Field Award for her fantastic Ask the Passengers. My Small Damages was named an Honor Award recipient.

There's a client trip in the middle of all this—a chance to learn about a part of the world I've never seen. Think of my hair blowing in the wind.

Finally, today, I am heartened by these words in the Library Matters, in the Greene County Record, about Handling the Truth. Serena Agusto-Cox let me know. What a fine friend she is.

If you’ve ever thought of telling your life story but aren’t sure where to start, pick up a copy of Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, by noted author Beth Kephart.

This beautifully written volume offers advice on finding your voice, framing your story and developing themes. Kephart, a National Book Award finalist for her first memoir ... and a teacher in the University of Pennsylvania’s creative writing program, is a capable guide on the challenging path to finding your truth.

 

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The Laws of Gravity/Liz Rosenberg: announcing a new book by a good friend

Liz Rosenberg has been on a truly remarkable roll—publishing award-winning children's books, book-club-worthy adult novels, a weekly letter to the president (in the Boston Globe), and thoughtful reviews—all while writing two novels for young adults, midnight poetry, and a brand new adult novel—The Laws of Gravity—which I was given the privilege of reading early, a few months ago.

Gravity is book about life and blood—about two best-friend cousins whose love is tested when one of them, Nicole, is diagnosed with a form of cancer that only cord blood from a placenta can possibly cure. The other cousin, Ari, has access to just what Nicole needs (thanks to his decision to freeze the umbilical cords of his children). On the surface, then, it seems obvious: Won't Ari make this sacrifice on behalf of a gravely ill cousin who has always been like a sister to him, a best friend? Wouldn't you? But Ari, weighing his options, begins to wonder whether the future health of his own children (for whom the cords have been frozen) is more important than the pressing present health of his cousin.

What does one sacrifice, and for whom? What does love require of us? These are among the questions that Liz works through so compellingly in Gravity—a book that Ann Hood called "a real page turner" and Chris Bohjalian called "an unflinching portrayal of that place where fear and family collide."

Here, below, are my own words, rendered with great respect for my friend, Liz. Gravity will be released on May 7, just ahead of Mother's Day. I encourage you to find a copy for yourself, and a friend.

"Clear-eyed and compassionate, The Laws of Gravity wrangles with the complexity of choice…What do we owe one another? How can we forgive? How do we live with ourselves? Liz Rosenberg's details are riveting; they pierce. Her ideas about friendship triumph."

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Upcoming Live Chat with Liz Rosenberg

Liz Rosenberg has done it all—written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Atlantic, and Paris Review; imagined (and published) spectacular stories for young readers; executed flawless poems; been the subject of film documentaries; and taught for years at Binghamton.

This year she also published her first novel for adults, Home Repair, which I read on Christmas day and fell head over heels for. Tomorrow night, Wednesday July 8 at 7 PM EST, Liz will be the guest on Book Club Girl on Air. You can call or text her with your questions. Or you can just listen in to what she has to say. I'll be there. I hope you will.

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Nothing but Ghosts Reading/Boston Globe Review/The Book Chat

Tonight I have the great privilege of joining My Friend Amy, her friends, and perhaps you?, for a live book chat at 9 PM EST/6 PM PST.

In preparation for that chat, Amy asked if I might do a reading from the book. I chose to read from a section that takes place in Cascais, Portugal—a storybook world that I visited eight years ago. The music here is from the extraordinarily talented Jordan O'Connor. The photos were taken before I owned a digital camera. The piece is two minutes long.



I was further blessed yesterday by the news that Nothing but Ghosts had been embraced by the Boston Globe, in a Liz Rosenberg review titled "Where the coolest kids are, like, undead." This morning I was honored by this review by Charlotte, who always reads with care and purpose.

Please join us this evening.

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Sunday Prose

If all the clocks and calendars vanished, children would still know when Sunday came. They would still feel that suck of dead air, that hollow vacuum created when time slips behind a curtain, when the minutes quit their ordering tick and ooze away, one by one. Colors are muted, a jellylike haze hovers and blurs the landscape. The phone doesn't ring, and the rest of the world hides and conspires to pretend that everyone's baking cookies or watching the game on TV. Then Monday arrives, and the comforting racket starts up all over again.

I have begun, as you can see, to read the Francine Prose novel Goldengrove. The wind is howling outside, and I spent the day's first waking hour hovering over The New York Times Book Review, admiring the work of David Barber, say, who, in his review of William Logan's new poetry collection, Strange Flesh, writes: "A hard-boiled formalist with a redoubtable aptitude for tersely fastidious diction and sinewy prosody whipped into fighting trim, he's a poet who wouldn't be caught dead trying to dazzle or beguile, recoiling from anything that might smack of lyrical extravagance or bardic pomp."

I mean: Look at that sentence.

Imagine the thought and the knowing that lives behind that sentence.

I digress.

I have begun to read Goldengrove, and though Michael Pakenham, for whom I wrote countless reviews for the Baltimore Sun, once cautioned me never to express an opinion about a book until I was actually finished reading it, I already know and can express two things: This Francine Prose paragraph about Sunday, quoted above, encapsulates a thought I've had since I had the capacity to formulate thoughts (such as they are). I was that child looking out a Sunday window—waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen. Where is everyone?, I wanted to know. What are they doing? Why have I been left alone, to Sunday?

But then there is this second thought: Not counting the lines that I've italicized above (which are tight and telling and so quintessentially Prose-esque), there is unexpected space between the words in Goldengrove, and I'm not referring to the typesetting. Sentences that feel not yet fully slashed or tightened. I've been spoiled by reading Liz Rosenberg's Home Repair, I know, which is at once taut and affecting, chiseled and heart big. Spoiled by Aleksandar Hemon and David Barber. But still, reading Goldengrove, I want to scrunch up many of its passages—clump them together, break them apart, pound out some of the air.

True: I feel that way every single time I read something that I've written.

Also true: It may be that such airiness is precisely what Prose needs to tell her story. I am intrigued. I am reading on.....

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Home Repair/Liz Rosenberg

I had the privilege, this Christmas day, of reading an early copy of Home Repair (Avon/HarperCollins), Liz Rosenberg's debut novel for adults, which will be available this coming April. In this brief video/photo montage, I read a few favorite sentences from the book and talk briefly (though so much more can be said) about its impact on my own mood and mind today.

Liz has lived a remarkable life. She knows sorrow first hand, and loss. She knows the persuasive power of children. She believes in love. She writes extraordinary sentences that somehow tangle economy and heart.

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Something Almost Unlooked For, Something Given

I spent the day being frustrated with myself—despite the gorgeous weather, despite the gift of time, I wasn't hitting the right rhythms with my new book. I was stumbling over sentences, fixing them, destroying pages. Taking out chapters, starting again. I kept watching the birds and the skies, taking deep breaths. Finally I came back inside.

And then I did something I vowed never again to do. I typed my own name into Google.

Was it procrastination or some heavenly hinting? I'll never know. But what I found when I did that was this most incredible gift—a Boston Globe story about House of Dance and Undercover. Written by the impeccable writer Liz Rosenberg, for whom I have such respect. I learned something from this review—was reminded of what I must do going forward, of what I must try to avoid, if I can. I'm grateful beyond measure for the time Ms. Rosenberg took to think out loud about the stories that I write. For rescuing me from this day of thwarted story.

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/09/07/lessons_for_teens_and_an_anxious_cat/

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