WILD BLUES: the cover (and story) reveal

A new middle-grade book is due out this year. A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Simon & Schuster). A book that has been in the making for many years. It brings together so much that I love (memories of my antiques-loving uncle, my Salvadoran husband's stories, the camping guide penned by my great-grandfather, Horace Kephart) and so much that I fear (dark caves and penetrating storms, random violence and untruths).

I can't wait to share the book with you, when it appears in June. But in the meantime, I have this jacket, so gorgeously illustrated by John Jay Cabuay and so magnificently—would the word be nurtured?—by Caitlyn and her team.

So many thanks, too, to Karen Grencik and Amy Rennert, for loving me through my books.

Finally, thanks to my husband for the stories, the trust, and the illustrations that he contributed to the pages of this book. They recall the evocative, fluid images he sent to me, years ago, when he was at Yale and I was in Philadelphia, waiting and waiting.

The jacket copy:

Choose.

That's what thirteen-year-old Lizzie's mom asks her to do as summer begins.

Lizzie chooses to stay with her uncle Davy and his cabin in the Adirondack wilds.

She chooses Matias Bondanza—Uncle Davy's neighbor, and her forever friend.

She chooses her survival guide, The Art of Keppy; scrambled eggs and pupusas; a big whale of a rock; the cool beneath trees.

But soon things happen that are beyond Lizzie's control. Things she could never have imagined.

A prison break.

A kidnapping.

A blinding storm.

There are new choices to make, and Lizzie must make them.

Because the fate of everything she loves hangs in the balance.

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The Thing About Jellyfish/Ali Benjamin: a major new voice for younger readers (for all readers)

When Jessica Shoffel speaks, I listen.

She's the sort of person who makes you feel seen. The sort who, as a Penguin publicist, didn't just oversee the campaigns of mega-watt writers like Laurie Halse Anderson and Jacquelyn Woodson, but also took time to read my novel Small Damages, to tell me how the story worked within her, and to create a glorious press release and campaign on its behalf. The sort who stood with me through a difficult time. The sort who found me alone at the Decatur, GA, book festival and included me in conversations, in a dinner, in a memorable hour with Tomie dePaulo. The sort who makes time in a hugely busy life to reach out to young people who have experienced loss, to run marathon races on behalf of medical research, and to talk to a dear family member, Kelsey, about what it is like to work among books. Jess is smart and gracious and kind and hard working. She is there. She is present. She is with you; she is for you. She is a rare kind of sisterhood.

And so when Jess wrote a few weeks ago to tell me about a book she had just read in her new role as Director of Publicity for Little Brown and Company's Books for Young Readers, when she said it was my kind of book, I didn't for one instant doubt her. Can I send it to you? she asked. Of course, I said.

And so it arrived. And so I have read it.

This book—this gorgeous, intelligent, moving, seamless, award-destined, Andrea Spooner edited book—is a debut middle grade novel by Ali Benjamin called The Thing About Jellyfish. Everything about this story enwraps, engages, enraptures. Its frizzy-haired, science-leaning, universe-scanning narrator who has lost her former best friend. Its obsession with the jellies that bloom incessantly within our seas, leave the big whales hungry, endanger us with their undying stings. Its child-hearted hopes and its big-minded mix of science and mystery. Its neat division into paper parts—purpose, hypothesis, straight through to conclusion. Its language—just the right bright, the right curious. (I could quote from every single line and prove that to you; Ali Benjamin never writes anything less than a wonderful sentence.) The science itself—impeccably (never intrusively) filtered into this story about friendship, family, school, and school teachers who care.

And then—watch—Diana Nyad appears. Diana Nyad, the endurance swimmer who refused to give up on her dream. The endurance swimmer who braved the countless jellyfish stings and made it to the other side. Symbol, hero, character. There she is, in this most exquisite book.

(For more on Diana and her relationship with my friend and agent Amy Rennert, read here. And look for Diana's much buzzed memoir, Find a Way, out in October).

In this summer of contemplation, this summer of weighing the odds, of wondering through the writing again, of maybe or maybe not trying again, of not knowing, it is a glorious thing to be reminded of what is possible with books. The thing about The Thing About is what says about what possible is.

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Philadelphia: A Love Affair (coming in Fall 2015 from Temple University Press)

A year from now, Temple University Press will release Love: A Philadelphia Affair, a collection of thirty-six essays on the intersection of memory and place. Thirty-eight of my black-and-white photographs will accompany the text.

Some twenty of those essays first appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer—pieces I was lucky enough to write for Inquirer editors Avery Rome and Kevin Ferris. Others have been written over the past few months for the book itself, taking me into and around the city on days of rain and sun to consider the streets, the architecture, the gardens, the sidewalks, the highs, the lows, and the communities that have played such a powerful role in the ways that I see, the books that I write, and the stories I teach. Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, Dangerous Neighbors (1876 Philadelphia), Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent (1871 Philadelphia), Small Damages, Handling the Truth, and even One Thing Stolen all reflect, in different ways, my love for this region and the people I have met here.

My great thanks to Micah Kleit, Ann Marie Anderson, and Gary Kramer at Temple University Press for helping me to see this dream through. My deep gratitude to Kevin Ferris and Avery Rome, who made my writing about this region such a pleasure. And huge appreciation to my agent Amy Rennert, who saw the details of this project through.

Micah and I wrapped the book up yesterday, from an editorial and photography perspective. I can't wait to hold this book in my hands, to be able to tell the world again and in new ways why I love where I live.

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Lessons in Publishing Longevity: Undercover Sells to the Dutch House, Callenbach

Yesterday, it became official: Callenbach, the glorious Dutch publishing house that released a gorgeous, translated Small Damages two years ago, has purchased Dutch translation rights to Undercover, the first young adult novel I ever wrote and published.

Like Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, Undercover first appeared in 2007 and taught me several things about risks worth taking. Like The Heart Is Not a Size, Undercover is vaguely autobiographical—a Cyrano story of a teen who cannot see her own beauty and who relies on words to bridge her to the world. My Elisa writes poems. She has an English teacher who cares. She skates secretly on a frozen pond. She meets a boy named Theo. Her words, she soon discovers, have power. But so, perhaps, does she.

It is moving to think of vestiges of my own Radnor High and adolescence being transported to the Netherlands, under the auspices of a publishing house established in 1854. It is also telling, and hopeful—a sign of optimism for all of us—that books written years ago still live on, somehow. This idea about longevity is perhaps the lesson for me of this year, as Flow, seven years later, emerges as an affordable paperback, and as Undercover begins the process of finding a new audience in the Netherlands, as it has also found in China.

My thanks to Alpha Wong of HarperTeen for negotiating the agreement, and to Amy Rennert, my agent, for letting me know.

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Diane Keaton and Around the World: Small Damages and Going Over on the Barnes and Noble Book Blog

Yesterday, while I watched the rain pound the world around me (and awaited the watery launch of Going Over at Radnor Memorial Library), a note rose up on Twitter, alerting me to this great gift from Dahlia Adler on the Barnes & Noble Book Blog.

The title of the post: Around the World in Eight YA Novels. Dahlia, amazingly, noted both Small Damages and Going Over:

Small Damages, by Beth Kephart
One of my favorite literary writers of YA, Kephart has beautifully re-created the Spanish countryside for this contemporary novel about a teenage girl who’s exiled from her American home in order to hide the secret of her pregnancy. She leaves no sensation unexperienced, from the feel of the earth to the scent of oranges, and it’s hard to imagine getting any closer to Seville without a passport. (Kephart’s newest, Going Over, which alternates between East and West Germany, is another excellent candidate for this list.)

Incredible words, and I am so grateful.

I am also grateful this morning to that clay artist, Karen Bernstein, who not only graced the table last evening with her amazing Berlin vessel, but who carried a copy of Handling the Truth to New York City, where Diane Keaton was in the 92nd Street Y House. Keaton's memoir Then Again is featured in Handling. I'd always wanted the great actress to have a copy. Last night Karen made that happen. "Signed. Sealed. Delivered.," Karen wrote at the end of her day. This morning, Karen wrote again to say that Diane Keaton had used the word "honored" when Karen gave that bright orange memoir book to her.

One last very cool thing, and then I'm off to read and celebrate the books of others. My agent, Amy Rennert, called a few days ago with the exceptional news that Rich Green, an esteemed film agent who has represented Jonathan Franzen, Matthew Quick, Anne Rice, Andrea Creamer, and others, has agreed to represent Going Over.

A good day. A good life.

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Poets and Writers features HANDLING THE TRUTH as a Best Book for Writers

And how grateful I am to Jason Poole for letting me know. Oh, this is good news on a warming but cold day as the sound of a saw buzzes in my house-under-repair background..... Thank you, Poets & Writers, Jason Poole, and, of course, Amy Rennert and Gotham.

The link is here. Check out the other fine featured books.

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The HANDLING gift, in Poets & Writers

We send our books into the world unarmed and hopeful. We are grateful to those who join our workshops, who send kind words, who tell us the story of the story.

We have no idea what we would do without them.

I am grateful this year to those of you who embraced Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. Who made room for it in busy lives and on crowded shelves. Who set it aside for a friend.

Today I received this issue of Poets and Writers, wrapped in a bow. The ad, which was designed by my husband, was placed by my agent, Amy Rennert, in the January 2014 inspiration issue of the magazine that I read first and always when I was a writer just starting out on my own. Amy has believed in this book from its very inception. She has cheered it along. She said, We need an ad, and she made it happen, wrapped it up in a bow. Gotham Books shared Amy's vision, and so the gift is from them, too.

Faith in a book that was a joy to write.
A million thanks to Amy and Gotham.
 

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Going Over: a sweet and surprising first mention in School Library Journal

After a long (good) day with a beloved client, I came home to the other parts of my life—to a wonderful call from my agent, Amy Rennert, to an unexpected Handling the Truth moment provided by George Kelley.org via Serena Agusto-Cox, and to these very kind words in School Library Journal, as shared with me by Lauren Strohecker.


It all made a very tired girl weepy—in a good way.

Thank you to everyone who makes my life so rich.

And thank you to Amy Cheney of SLJ, who wrote these words:

Yet Beth Kephart’s Going Over (April) is the galley that I am most looking forward to reading. We learned some interesting back story: editor Tamra Tuller visited Berlin for the first time a few years ago; as she walked the graffiti-lined streets from West to East Berlin, she thought about what it must have been like to live in the city while the Berlin Wall was still up, and what it must have been like to be entirely cut off from loved ones by it. About a year later, Kephart visited Berlin and similarly fell in love. The two compared notes and, within months, Kephart had completed the book.

Kephart’s story so exceeded Tuller’s expectations, she says, that she cried when she first read it. Also of note is that the design of the book is meant to bring the reader further into the experience: its cover shows the actual Berlin Wall, and its endpapers show the different layers of the wall: the watchtower, service barriers, signal, and hinterland fence. Our immediate reaction? So cool!

A link to the entire preview is here.

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Live, Not Exist: The Diana Nyad Story

Two years, three weeks ago, I published this piece about Diana Nyad, the sixty-four-year-old swimmer who today successfully completed her swim from Cuba to Florida's Key West.

It took Nyad five tries. She never gave up. And as my agent, Amy Rennert, who is Diana's good friend, wrote earlier today, "Her accomplishment will be that much more satisfying after all of the earlier attempts.  What a story!  What an inspiration!" 

And so in honor of all of us who think we may be too old, or may be too unlucky, or may be not right, I repeat this story. This is how it looked two years ago. We know how it looks today.

Triumph.


"Think good positive thoughts for our friend Diana Nyad," my friend and agent Amy Rennert wrote in an email this past Monday.  "She's twelve hours into her historical swim from Havana to Key West.  About 48 hours to go."

Diana Nyad, I thought.  Diana Nyad?  (And then, the next thought:  48 hours to go?)  Just hours before I'd been reading the CNN story about this intrepid swimmer who was encouraging us all to look at right now as the most essential chapter of our lives.  "I'm almost 62 years old and I'm standing here at the prime of my life," she was quoted as saying.  "I think this is the prime.  When one reaches this age, you still have a body that's strong but now you have a better mind."

"How do you know Diana?" I emailed back, and soon Amy was explaining a friendship that has lasted some 30 years—its origins winding back to a super female athletes story Amy had long ago covered for Women's Sports magazine.  Diana Nyad, Amy said, was the greatest long-distance swimmer in the world.  She'd completed the 102.5 mile journey from Bimini to Florida years ago.  She'd once before attempted, in what proved to be tempestuous waters, the 100 miles from Cuba to Florida.  She'd circled Manhattan Island in world record time.  She was a Hall of Famer and (again) she was nearly 62 years old and now twelve hours into another historic swim.

Amy, meanwhile, was on a plane.  So were some two dozen other Diana Nyad fans, coming in from all across the country to cheer their heroine on.  "Just landed," Amy wrote to me, the next morning, 4:57 AM.

By the time Amy reached Diana, the history-making athlete had had to abandon her swim.  The water wasn't right.  A shoulder was nagging.  Amy sent me the news, but then she sent more word of the many faithful friends who were there when Diana's boat brought her in. 

Sometimes you don't quite get to where you'd wanted to go.  But let me ask you this:  Doesn't the heroism lie in the trying?  In getting back into that water after so many years, in re-doing the math on prime?  This post, then, is a celebration of Diana, photographed in the first shot by Christi Barli.  It's a celebration, too, of Amy Rennert (pictured in the second shot), who is always there for her friends. 

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mucking around (in Good Housekeeping)

I have Laura Mathews, Amy Rennert, and Fran Lefkowitz to thank for the privilege of this page in the July issue of Good Housekeeping (an issue that has so many good stories in it that I will likely read it front to back).

I have my husband to thank for inviting me to spend a few hours each week doing something new, and for enduring my lack of self confidence. And I have the extraordinary ladies of the pottery studio (as well as my husband) for helping me find ways to see half-conceived or overly ambitious projects through. There is no competition at the Wayne Art Center on Thursday mornings. There are only artists mucking around with clay—centering the pots, pulling the handles, applying the glaze, sharing trade secrets, and loving our saint-ess, Bernadette. It is a particularly peaceful place, and I am grateful for the companionship and for the overt love and generosity that keeps me trying.

Karen Bernstein, thank you for finding the story first, and for letting me know.

And thank you, Good Housekeeping, for being the first magazine to mention Handling the Truth. I guess this means that August 6th, the publication date, is soon.

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important (and thrilling) news: Teaching a Master Class for YoungArts (young artists, read on for the chance of a lifetime)

On this very beautiful Philadelphia day (blue-drenched skies and clouds a-wisp in both directions), I share news that I've wanted to share for the past many days.  Amy Rennert, my long-time agent, is the one who whispered this in my ear.  I have her to thank for bridging me toward that very thing that makes me happiest in life—hanging out with urgent, passionate, striving kids and helping them grow.

So here we go.  This coming January, I will be joining the glorious YoungArts program in Miami—"the signature national organization that recognizes and supports America's most talented 15-18 year olds in the visual, literary and performing arts."  Do you want to fill this very hour with beautiful things (music, HBO film, photography, stories)?  Then go to the YoungArts website, grab a root beer or a cup of tea, and sit back. Just let it happen.

Since 1981, YoungArts has given young people from across the country the chance to learn from giants such as Edward Albee, Robert Redford, Julian Schnabel, Michael Tilson Thomas, Bobby McFerrin, Frank Gehry, Placido Domingo, Liv Ullman, and Kathleen Turner.  It has helped nurture stars such as Viola Davis, Elizabeth Kostova, Allegra Goodman, Nicki Minaj, and Vanessa Williams.  It has elevated culture.  It has made people dance.  It has mattered. 

And you, my young friends out there—you still have a chance to apply.  Applications for this could-it-be-any-better-than-this? opportunity can be filed up through October 19, 2012.  Those who are selected—in nine disciplines—are eligible for the week-long immersion in the arts (Miami, early January), for U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts recognition, and for monetary awards. 

This year, I will be teaching writing to high school students in a botanical garden.  Over the course of that same week, Marisa Tomei, one of my favorite actresses (did you see her in "The Wrestler?"; don't you just love her whole, authentic self?), Bill T. Jones, that sensational choreographer and teacher, and Lourdes Lopez, recently named the artistic director of the Miami City Ballet, will be conducting Master Classes as well.  The evenings will be filled with performances.  A gala dinner will be held.  And I will be there, happy.

My young talented friends, consider applying.  Amy Rennert, thank you.  And Lisa Leone, the real Lisa Leone (vice president of Artistic Programs), you are one talented photo/movement-goddess.  I encourage those reading my blog to visit The Real Lisa Leone and to discover, among many fine finds, a certain Marisa Tomei hula hooping her way to glory. 

Gotta go run and touch the sky.

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Handling the Truth: the cover reveal

Last week, Lauren Marino, my Gotham editor, shared what I think is a most stunning cover for Handling the Truth, which is due out from Gotham (Penguin USA) next August.  To Lauren and to Susan Barnes, who has answered so many questions along the way, my deepest thanks.  To Amy Rennert, who has cared so much about this work, thanks, too.  This cover is sensational—a great blessing on a book that means so very much to me. 

The catalog copy:

In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a critically acclaimed National Book Award finalist shares inspiration and practical advice for writing—and living with—memoir.

Writing memoir is a deeply personal, and consequential, undertaking.  As the acclaimed author of five memoirs spanning significant turning points in her life, Beth Kephart has been both blessed and bruised by the genre. In Handling the Truth, she thinks out loud about the form—on how it gets made, on what it means to make it, on the searing language of truth, on the thin line between remembering and imagining, and, finally, on the rights of memoirists.   Drawing on proven writing lessons and classic examples, on the work of her students and on her own memories of weather, landscape, color, and love, Kephart probes the wrenching and essential questions that lie at the heart of memoir. A beautifully written work in its own right, Handling the Truth opens Kephart’s memoir-making classroom—and thoughts—to all those who read or seek to write the truth.

Kephart is a very gifted and insightful writer.”— USA Today

 “[Kephart] writes eloquently.”—The New York Times Book Review

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two birthdays: a son's, a book's

The most important thing about this day is that it marks my son's twenty-third birthday.  He came into the world after thirty-six hours of labor.  He had a full head of thick, black hair.  He reached for my husband's finger and squeezed it tight.  The next day, we drove him to my mother's house in a beat-up Ford Mustang—his hat still on despite the July heat.

There's no accounting for a mother's love.  There's no math that will contain it.  The baby became a boy became a kid became a man—so bright, so inventive, so funny, so adventuresome, so thoughtful, and with a raft of terrific friends, and with a future that seems (thanks to some recent interviews) so close and within reach, and with a talent for loving.

That boy traveled to Spain with me and my husband, several times, to visit my brother-in-law.  We together met characters like an old man named Luis, and like a count who raised Spain's prized fighting bulls.  We traveled out to a broad cortijo, watched the gypsies dance, sat front row at flamenco shows.  We ate paella at midnight on the streets, tapas in tiny bars.  We went in and out of bull rings and up cathedral towers and in between the narrow spaces of Seville.  We watched the nuns flutter by.  We saw children playing on rooftops.  And when I started to write a novel with all of this as the backdrop, this son of mine listened to me read out loud—this passage or that at the kitchen table.  He steered the ship with his spare comments and would not let me give up in the face of grave disappointments.  He said, "Believe in yourself."

I don't think there would be a Small Damages without this guy, and that brings us to birthday number two.  Small Damages, a book that has always been dedicated to my son, is being launched today.  That it is a book, that it has come this far, is all thanks to the extremely extraordinary Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo of Philomel. That it has been welcomed into this world is all thanks to the generosity of readers and bloggers and reviewers and interviewers, whose goodness is unfathomable and restorative and redeeming and proof that maybe a girl can write and write and write and not be especially famous, but keep writing, and then have a moment in time like this one.

An unforgettable moment in time.

To all of you, and to my agent Amy Rennert, who has been there through all fourteen books, thick and thin (and so much thin), thank you.

Cake is now being served for all.

The icing is here, in these words from the great (truly great) Pam van Hylckama of Bookalicious.org and in this kindness from the ever-kind and supportive Serena Agusto-Cox.

From Pam:

It is not often that a book that makes you lose your breath. You read novel that makes you want to stand on top of a building and read the prose aloud to those walking below. Words that make you feel human and humble in the most gorgeous way.

If I could read Small Damages over and over again just like it was the first time I would never read another book again. This post is less of a review and more of a plea. Please go to your bookstore, or your library and bring this book home. Make yourself a glass of iced tea and sit in the sun and imagine that you too are in Spain and imagine the scents of Seville all around you while you read.

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HANDLING THE TRUTH: a little publishing news

It is just after five in the morning, and I have been sitting here searching for words, wanting to begin this post in just the right place.

But I am perplexed, for there are so many beginnings.  I shall begin at the end, then, and share what is, for me, such day-breaking, joy-making news:

April 17, 2012
Non-fiction:
General/Other        
Memoirist, fiction writer and National Book Award finalist for A SLANT OF SUN, Beth Kephart's HANDLING THE TRUTH, a book devoted to the reading, teaching, and making of memoir; about consequences and libraries, privileges and pleasures, and finally knowing ourselves -- providing a proven framework for teachers, students, and readers, to Lauren Marino at Gotham, by Amy Rennert at the Amy Rennert Agency (world). 

HANDLING THE TRUTH emerges from my years of writing, critiquing, and teaching memoir.  It erupts from a place both scorched and urgent.  It means so much to me because my students mean so much to me, and because memoir—the form, the possibilities—must, I think, be both reconsidered and defended.

But no book emerges on its own.  This one will exist because my agent, Amy Rennert, received the first 70 pages of this book on a Saturday morning, read it on a Sunday morning, and called me that Sunday afternoon.  She already had a plan.  She was certain.  She took the book out into the world, and before I even had a chance to dream, she had found this book its right home.   Shore lady, she wrote to me last week, as I was contemplating dolphins and sea, we have a deal. Lauren Marino is the executive editor of Gotham Books, a Penguin Group imprint (who doesn't love Penguin?). She has worked with Diablo Coady, Isaac Mizrahi, Thomas Moore, Jeffrey Zaslow, Ann Crittenden, Ruth Reichl, Jane Green, Cindy Crawford, Willie Nelson, and others.  I am honored by the chance to write for her.

I am delighted, too, to share this one other small thing at this early hour:  HANDLING THE TRUTH is a book that once sported another title.  And then one morning, while grousing on Facebook about a nonfiction writer who takes (in my opinion) far too many liberties, Melissa Sarno posted a video clip meant to make me laugh and (perhaps, who knows?) to silence my rant.  All day long I kept thinking about that clip and about how much I love Melissa.  I knew by dusk what I had to do.  Sarno, you are loveliness supreme.

I have many people, then, to thank today.  Gregory Djanikian, for inviting me to teach at Penn in the first place. Al Filreis of Penn's Kelly Writers House, for supporting my work in the classroom.  My students, whose work and faces and stories thrill, inspire, uplift me.  Amy Rennert, for believing so much in this book, for making sure it had the right home, for being a friend through all these years.  Lauren Marino, for your (joy-making) faith.  And, of course, Melissa and Jack.

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the view from here (the word is magic)

We looked for birds and found this pond.  We hurried to the bay at sunset.  I stood on the balcony on the cusp of dawn, looking for dolphins and blues.

In the mornings I write Berlin for Tamra.  It comes slow, but it comes.  Perhaps I don't want to say goodbye to these characters.  Perhaps I am dwelling longer than I should.  I am in the homestretch now, but I won't rush it.  I can't.  You don't hurry your way toward story.

In the meantime, I am blessed by a certain Jessica Shoffel of Philomel, who is doing so much to ease the path of Small Damages into the world, and getting remarkable results.  I am blessed, too, by my agent Amy Rennert.  She knows why.

The word, this week, is magic.

  

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At 96 years old, Herman Wouk sells a new novel, in a project spearheaded by my agent

Obviously my agent, Amy Rennert, cannot tell me a lot about what she is doing—not when she's in the run-up to a big sale, at least, or in the heat of auctions.  But today while Amy and I were talking about another confidential project (which is A okay, because it happens to be mine), she forwarded a link to something she called special.

I waited.  My email pinged.  I opened the link.  Whaaaatttt? I said.

Because, as it turns out, ninety-six-year-old Herman Wouk, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Caine Mutiny, has a new novel due out from Jonathan Karp at Simon & Schuster, a novel with Moses at its heart.  Mr. Karp and Mr. Wouk are, says Amy, no accidental pairing; in fact, Mr. Karp wrote his master's thesis on Wouk when in graduate school at New York University.

But neither are Amy and Mr. Wouk an accidental pairing.  I asked Amy for some behind-the-scenes insights.  This is what she said:

The new novel is outstanding. HW has long wanted to write a novel about Moses and in The Lawgiver he approaches the subject with great warmth, wisdom and imagination. It's a tour de force. Some of his earlier novels have long been favorites of mine—including City Boy, The Caine Mutiny (my father introduced me to it and I still have his original hardcover copy from 1951, the year it was published!) and Marjorie Morningstar—and getting to know Herman Wouk and work with him closely has been a great privilege and pleasure.    

Impressed?  I am. 

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Mood, Memphis, Shubert, the Big Apple, the A plus, the book jacket: the day in pictures

On our way to "Memphis" yesterday we stopped in the Fashion District, rode the crowded elevator to the second floor of Mood, and shopped where the Project Runway stars shop—got lost among countless bolts of fabric (does anyone actually know how many bolts of fabric lie supine at Mood?).  Oh, this was a great thing to do.  Yes, I did come home with Mood feathers and a T-shirt.  Next we went to Parsons and stood inside its skinny lobby.  All so that I could say (to any who would listen; will you listen?):  I stood among the vapors of Mondo and Austin. 

"Memphis" was just what I needed yesterday—third-row orchestra seats, center, thanks to my brother.  I loved the storyline of this show, surged ecstatic about the stage sets, felt the hammering heart of the big dance numbers, totally dug that gospel choir.  I loved the two big guys who danced like there are no dance rules and who sang with such peppy abandon.

Just before the show began, I received a note from my agent, Amy Rennert (who always remembers), and another from Tamra Tuller, that dear soul, who was writing to say that my Small Damages jacket—a sample from the first run—would be waiting for me at home when I returned.  It's gorgeous!  It's debossed!! It, in some unpossess-able way, belongs to me.  And at this dark hour, dawn, I am still trying to figure out how to take a photograph of it so that you can see what the fabulous Michael Green calls its "special touches."  Philomel made an investment in this jacket. It shows. "You need to frame that one," my husband, the artist of inscrutable high standards, said.

On the bus home from NYC, our son called.  He's an extremely happy kid.  No, not a kid.  He's a young man with the right friends and a bright future and such a knack for analysis and writing that he earned an A plus on a big paper this week.  "What did the professor say?" I asked.  Quietly, then, never boastful, my son answered.

"Well," he said.  "He actually called it awesome."

"Awesome," I repeated.  "Wow. Was there more?"  I have to ask; my kid is immune to bragging and strut.  (Obviously he's a better person than his mother, but I've been saying that since the day he was born.)

"He said it wasn't just persuasive but innovative and inspired."

"Innovative!  Inspired!  Well, that must feel good."

"Yeah."  

"Can I see it some time?"

"If you want to."

If I want to.  Jeepers, I want to.

Today is Palm Sunday, April Fool's Day, my birthday.  There will be no client work undertaken during the next several hours (for any clients who may be reading).  There will be church, and then I'll take a drive to Clay's Creative Bakery and buy a couple of cupcakes.  I will eat at least one.  I will write Berlin in the afternoon.  I will figure out how to photograph the Small Damages jacket.  I will or will not take a walk, depending on the weather.

Peace.

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You Are My Only is heading to Germany (and Beth is smiling)

Not long ago, I posted the Nichts als Liebe cover of Nothing But Ghosts, which will be released in Germany this summer by editor Julia Malik and a division of the esteemed independent publishing house, dtv-Reihe Hanser.  (A fact that thrills me.)

Today I happily share the news that You Are My Only has been bought by the very same house and will be released within the next two years.

I am ecstatic.  This is not just a terrific house, but this is a country to which I am stealing every early morning in my imagination as I write my novel about Berlin.  It is a country to which I hope to return this summer.

Thank you, dtv-Reihe Hanser, Jenny Meyer Literary Agency, and Amy Rennert.  This is such good and welcome news.  Rights to You Are My Only have now been sold in both Germany and Brazil.

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a moment from the past, two National Book Awards nights

I try not to look back too often—try always to press forward.  But this morning, while looking for a photo of Alane Salierno Mason to accompany my Publishing Perspectives profile, I came across others that have, quite frankly, set me back today with memories.

From left to right, in the first photograph above, Yaffa Eliach, who was nominated in the nonfiction category with me for There Once Was a World; Patty Chang Anker, my publicist and still friend; Louise Brockett, the lead publicist for W.W. Norton; my agent, Amy Rennert; myself; and Alane.

The second photo, which makes me cry, really cry, when I look at it, is of Patty and me.  There was so much emotion in that moment.  There was so much that I did not know, and still don't.

There.  I'll start looking ahead again, come tomorrow.

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A Little You Are My Only News

I've never been to Brazil, but I have longed to go.  For the time being, You Are My Only is going in my stead, thanks to the good work of Amy Rennert and the Jenny Meyer Literary Agency, Inc.  Brazilian-Portuguese rights to the book have been sold to Novo Conceito.

You Are My Only also, as many of you know, went into a third U.S. printing this week.  For that enormous bit of good fortune, I have the world of generous bloggers and independent booksellers (and of course Darcy Jacobs, of Family Circle) to thank. Thanks today especially to Serena Agusto-Cox, who placed You Are My Only on the D.C. Literature Examiner gift book buying guide.  Check out the entire list for some spectacular recommendations from a very fine reader.

I thank you all.  From the bottom of my heart, I do.

Many thanks, too, to Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA, for being the bearer of good news.

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