Tell the Truth. Make It Matter.

A few days ago I shared some of the interior pages of a memoir workbook long in the making here at Juncture.

Today I am happy to announce that the book is launched. It can be ordered here.

In Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. Beth Kephart offers an insider’s look at the
making of true tales—and an illustrated workbook to guide the wild ride. Combining smartly selected samples with abundantly fresh ideas, dozens of original exercises with cautions, questions with answers, Kephart inspires, encourages, and persistently believes in those with a story to tell.

Write this, Truth says. Read this. Consider this. Discover who you are. Have some honest fun with words.

There are questions here about the lives we've led: What do we remember about our first lie? What have we learned from disappointment? Why can’t we remember? Why can’t we forget? What do we know about umbrellas? There are thoughts about the crafting of stories, the discovery of voice, and the development of universal themes. There are quotes and hints and exercises and words from some of today’s leading memoir practitioners. 

There's room to write and draw.

Sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is reflective. Sometimes it goes big and sometimes small. It's progressive, one exercise building into the next, toward one truth and then another.

We hope you'll be as excited as we are.

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Juncture Workshops: One Final Spot Left in Cape May, NJ

We may still be riding the waves of our Field Notes memoir workshop but we're also eagerly anticipating our time by the Jersey shore, this coming November.

We have one spot left in this gorgeous painted lady.

Write to us here, if you have interest.

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on teaching memoir (the Juncture Workshop files)

It occurs to me that you might have noticed that I'm posting less frequently on the blog these days. In part, that is to spare you.

(You're welcome.)

In part it's because I'm devoting so much time to reading and planning the Juncture memoir newsletter, which is sent out to our list once a month. Juncture Notes is free, and you can sign up here to read my interviews with memoirists, my reflections on the form, and the work that our readers send in, among other things. (Juncture Notes also features the original work of my multi-media artist husband. His clay. His photographs. His 3-D images.)

But much of my absence here on the blog can be directly tied to the image above. I call these the Juncture Workshop files. It is a long-ongoing project—a massive effort to cull, save, sort the memoir thoughts I have, the excerpts I love, the exercises that occur to me in the middle of each night—all so that I can teach most effectively both at Penn and at the five-day Juncture memoir workshops we're conducting in McClure, PA, in September, and in Cape May, NJ, in November. (More details on both here.)

I'm not close to done. I'll never be done. I've just ordered eight more books—and a new bookcase. In fact, within two weeks one room out of the seven rooms in my house will be devoted solely to memoir—to the hundreds of memoirs that I own, to the files I am building, to the essays of those who are joining our workshops.

Call me obsessed.

It's all right.

I get that all the time.

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Juncture Writing Workshops is bringing memoir to Cape May, NJ, in November. Join us?

SEA CHANGE
Cape May, NJ
November 1 – 6, 2016


Cape May, NJ. It’s an island, actually, a National Historic Landmark City that was home to Colonial Era whalers and fishermen before it became a favorite retreat for sea-breeze-seeking Philadelphians. Today the town is famous for its multi-hued “painted lady” houses, its wrap-around porches and rocking chairs, its original boutiques and restaurants, and the trees that canopy its streets. Beyond the white sands, dolphins slice the waves. In the wildlife preserves, bogs, and salt marshes, birds sing, turtles crawl, and muskrats build their funny houses.

I grew up visiting Cape May; my favorite uncle lived there. When Bill and I recently discovered a capacious, newly renovated circa-1872 painted lady just blocks from the beach and the town, we knew we’d found the perfect setting for our November Juncture workshop. A private room for each writer who comes to stay. A sunny gathering place. A wrap-around porch. The sea. The birds.

We’ll learn from some of the greatest memoirs ever written—and write our own. Through a combination of readings, guided exercises, and critiques, we will acquire a firm understanding of what memoir is (and what it isn’t) and work toward the development of meaningful themes and sustaining scenes. We will generate and refine new pages, craft a prologue, and share our work in evening readings. We will walk the beach, find the birds, take photographs, meet formally and informally.

A beautifully designed book featuring the images and words of the week will commemorate our time together.

If you are interested, please do let us know by sending us a message through this Juncture Writing Workshops site.

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At the Farm: Five-day memoir workshop, coming this September

I have written here of our upcoming memoir workshops—Juncture Workshops—and friends, they are indeed coming. We have completed our visit to our first planned gathering place—a working Civil War era farm in central Pennsylvania. We have spent time with our hosts—an historian extraordinaire and his wonderful wife. We have slept in the Yetter cabin. We have walked the farm, talked to the peacocks, climbed up into the surrounding hills, watched the baby calf get loose from the barn.

We think it will be exceptional.

We're looking to launch this in the second week of September.

We are finalizing details and will be announcing more on this blog and on this site.

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five-day memoir workshops coming, summer of 2016

I have spoken here of our plan to launch five-day memoir workshops in beautiful, memorable places.

A working farm.

A seaside resort.

A lively river town.

Workshops that mean something—and deliver lasting value.

We're putting the final touches on all of that now. We're taking our final exploratory trips and designing the web site. We'll be launching that site in three weeks or so.

We just wanted you to know: it's coming.

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today's thinking about memoir looks like this

Over the past many days I've been building memoir workshops—the five-day, traveling, unusually unusual workshop that I will launch next year (if you are interested, leave your name here), an online program being developed with a radically effective book-coaching friend, a two-evening program for the fourth and fifth graders of North Philly, the syllabus for my 2016 memoir course at Penn, and the two workshops I'll be delivering next Sunday and Monday in Frenchtown, NJ—one for Book Garden (you can still register) and one for the local high school.

That building looks like this.

And it is far from done.

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