Talking about memoirs and memoirists loved (and this is just a few of the books on my long list) on Biographile

I'll never be good at choosing favorites. I've never much excelled at making lists. But today, on that wonderful site, Biographile, I'm talking about memoirs and memoirists I've loved—a handful, really, of a very long list. If only for the pleasure of getting to know Biographile for yourself, I hope you will check it out.

And — I just received this photograph taken by Jen Cleary a few weeks ago, as part of the First Person Arts Festival. Since that is the one and only Dani Shapiro up there (who is listed in my Biographile story), I thought it appropriate to use the photo here. She was extremely generous to come to Philadelphia and talk with us.

The piece begins like this, below:

That word favorite? It does me in. Arrests me.

My favorite husband is my only husband. My favorite child is my only child. My favorite condition is alive. Beyond that, I have too many favorite foods to count, and my favorite color depends on the day, and my favorite flower is anything that somehow manages to survive my gardening ways, and I like pinot noir most, much of the time, except when there’s also a malbec around or a really fine cabernet.

And concludes here.

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Wide Awake. Every Day./Starla J. King: Reflections

Over Thanksgiving weekend I had the now-rare privilege of spending a handful of consecutive days with my son. A gonzo slice of heaven. He's always been one of the wisest people I know. He's always had plenty to say.

The conversation turned, at one point, to most desirable human traits, and on the quick top of his list was positivity. I want to be around people who see the good in things first, he said. People who don't make themselves feel smarter by constantly finding fault in others.

I know what you mean, I said.

Starla J. King, a life coach with bright eyes and a pretty impressive smile, knows, too. We met atmospherically on Twitter, as people do, but we met for real during a First Person Arts event that brought Dani Shapiro and me together on a conversational stage. Starla sat right up there in the first row, beaming positivity, embracing the dialogue, and allowing her slender body and her many tiny earrings to take it all in.

A few weeks later, Starla sent me her own new book, Wide Awake. Every Day., wrapped in blue tissue and a red bow. This is her gift to the world, her hope played out, page after page, that we'll all stop for a bit in this harried life  to see, to feel, to love, to know, to hold a cat in our arms as we watch the birds. Infused with personal stories, gently nudging us toward a more fulfilling state of being, this lovely book is organized in day by day fashion. A calendar of positive possibilities. It is utterly Starla—bright eyed, hopeful, brimming with love.

So here is something for you on this December 10th, where (here, at least) it snows soft snow.

Starla's word for this day is Re-new.

Her wisdom is this:

"Re-new is to make new again—we can choose it at any time by letting the old slip through our grasp as we open our hands to receive the new." What, Starla wants to know, can you do to "let go of the old...?"

Today, December 10, I plan to go take a walk in the renewing white with my eyes wide open and my camera around my neck.

What about you?

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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 Art of Writing the Personal: Dani Shapiro comes to Philadelphia (and thoughts on Slow Motion)

Yesterday, New York City beckoned—a chance to talk about some of the young people I've taught before a wonderful audience at Bank Street (thank you, Jennifer Brown), a review of Voice in a mentor workshop (we talked The Book Thief, Two Boys Kissing, Small Damages), a quick run through the wonderful exhibit of children's books at the New York Public Library with special people, lunch with my son and husband, a hurried walk through Hoboken, a drive back home in twilight hours.

Today, I travel to my city, Philadelphia, to spend time with the incredibly talented Dani Shapiro on behalf of the First Person Arts Festival. We'll be at Christ Church Neighborhood House (20 N. American Street) from 4 to 5:30. Tickets can be bought at the door. I hope to see you for many reasons, but mostly because of this: Dani Shapiro has something to say, she says it with profound intelligence, and this is a rare opportunity to see her in person in the City of Brotherly Love.

I've read Dani through the years. I've heard others talk about her generosity toward other writers, about her powers as a teacher, about the choices that she's made; I've watched her in conversation with Oprah. I've read and loved Devotion as well as Still Writing, Dani's newest book on the writing life. I've anticipated this conversation, I'm saying, for a long, good time.

But it was not until this morning that I read Slow Motion, Dani's bestselling memoir about the accident that changed her life. Dani was a young beauty mired inside an unwanted relationship with her good friend's stepfather when Dani's father and mother were involved in a car accident. Dani's father would ultimately, and somewhat mysteriously, pass away. Her mother would heal from 80 fractures—and premature widowhood. The boyfriend would want what such boyfriends want, and Dani—who had left Sarah Lawrence in pursuit of an acting career and of this relationship—would have to make choices about who she was, what she wanted, where her life was going.

I hadn't read Slow Motion because I wanted to know Dani first, to see her as a person first, and not as this defining story. And here is the spectacular thing about having just now read the final page: Slow Motion is one of those books that has earned every accolade it's ever gotten. The story itself is remarkable. But what I believe is even more remarkable is the way that Dani tells it—her use of time, her measures of distance, her patience with the story itself, her silken language. Many may read Slow Motion for the story, but I read for the artistry.

And I was not disappointed by a single page.

Here is Dani, toward the end of the book—re-enrolled in college, emerging, at last, as the writer she must have always been. Dani has musical training in her background. Her sentences are the proof of this:

The professor sits back as the students finally start speaking. Until now, I have been the quiet one in the class, too insecure and frightened to say a word. But today, something begins to shift. I see that there might be some way I can take the raw material of my life and transform it into something that transcends my own experience. I can organize the noise in my head into something that has order and structure. I can make sense of what, until now, has been senseless.

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Eric Xu publishes a poem, Christine dances at Annenberg, and we celebrate the moments

There are three beautiful people in this photograph and one very lucky one. The three? A scientist/poet. A scientist/dancer. A scientist/artist. Phenomenal writers, all.

(Scientist, for me, is anyone brave enough to take any course that leads toward a degree in engineering or the medical arts.)

These are some of my last-semester students (Angela, sadly, arrived too late for this photograph), which is to say, these are members of my family. Eric, over there on the left, just had a magnificent poem published in Apiary, and he has sent it to me, and I have read it, and I am not in any way surprised by its quality, nor by its heart, nor by its collectively powerful imagery. Not surprised, for I know Eric. I know the strength of his character and the reach of his art.

If you click on the link here, you will find his poem, which was written during his class with Professor Greg Djanikian. Greg's office sits above my classroom at Penn. On very good days, I have a chance to talk with him. It's because of Greg that I came to Penn to teach memoir as an adjunct. Because of him that I was allowed to teach a second class after conducting a first and sometimes (because of its small size) wobbly class.

Because of him that I have people like Eric in my life.

And also Christine, who is performing this evening and tomorrow evening in a show that she herself choreographed. Curtains are up at 7 PM at the Annenberg Prince Theater. I'd give anything to be there, but I cannot. Please go in my stead. Give her your love and your awe, for Christine inspires awe; she is endowed with specialness.

And also Chang, our remarkable artist, our no-way-is-English-her-second-language writer, our kind soul and purveyor of hot chocolate, our wise one. If you go up and down the campus at Penn you may find her writing, you may find her drawing, you may find her solving Organic Chemistry problems. She does it all. She does it with love.

And also Angela, who taught us all so much about love and forgiveness, who made us cry, who wrote the heck out of every single sentence. Someday I will have a picture of her, too, but in the meantime, look for beauty.

I am, as I said, the lucky one.

And I'll be back on the campus Monday night, at 7 PM, for a Live at the Kelly Writers House taping, joining Andrew Panebianco, Katie Samson, and Raphael Xavier for a WXPN event with Michaela Majoun. We'll be there on behalf of the 12th Annual  First Person Arts Festival, which is launching in a matter of days now. Toni Morrison will be in town for that festival. Rita Dove. Ana Castillo. Sonia Sanchez. Others. I'll be joining Dani Shapiro on the stage and also teaching a memoir workshop focusing on food and kitchen spices, and so we'll be at Penn on Monday, talking about all this with WXPN.

Where would I be without my alma mater?

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Handling the Truth: The Shelf Awareness Review (oh!)

Last night, as I sat waiting for the curtains to rise on the 50th season of Pennsylvania Ballet—as I sat waiting, especially, for the gorgeous (inside and out) Julie Diana and her wonderful husband, Zachary Hench, to dance "Diamonds," a piece I had watched them rehearse a week or so before—I thought, Stop, Beth. Live this moment. Don't let it rush by.

I sat on the edge of my seat. I sat watching through streaming tears. This ballerina and her husband and that corps. The exhilarating precision and grace and humanity of it all. When art finds you, let yourself be found. Stop hurrying. Be.

Oh, how they danced. How exquisite Julie is. How other-worldly talented is her Zak. How right they are together.

This morning, too, I am stopping. I am putting aside the hurry of corporate work for just this hour and allowing myself to feel grateful for the journey I have lately been on. So many of you have been so kind to me, and have I thanked you enough? I have met such interesting people along the Handling the Truth way. Just this week I talked to the great Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, and now I look ahead to weekend conversations with Liz Rosenberg (at Big Blue Marble Bookstore, in Mount Airy) and fellow memoir summitters (at Rosemont College). I look ahead to a fantastic, multi-tiered event at Bank Street in New York City, created by the Ambassador of Children's Books (my title for her), Jennifer M. Brown, and to a conversation with Dani Shapiro as part of the First Person Arts Festival. I look toward a conversation at Kelly Writers House (and a radio recording) and a conversation on behalf of Kelly Writers House (off Rittenhouse Square), and to more workshops, and to my upcoming road trip with the fabulous A.S. King, as we join the Pennsylvania Library Association (and others of our writing friends) in western Pennsylvania.

In any life, this would be a lot. In my life, it is huge. And again: Have I thanked all of you enough?

My gratitude is here. My gratitude is huge. And I am giving this particular hour over to my gratitude (not a big enough word) to Jennifer M. Brown, who has just now posted this beautiful review of Handling the Truth in today's Shelf Awareness. Jenny and I, we just love books. We can't help ourselves. And I adore Jenny. That's just how it is and will be.

My cup runneth over.

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Taking the First Person Arts Stage, with Dani Shapiro

Incredibly happy as I anticipate my conversation (about books, memoir, writing, meaning) with Dani Shapiro during the upcoming First Person Arts Festival on Sunday, November 10, 4 - 5:30, at Christ's Church in Philadelphia.

The details are here. My thoughts about Dani's wonderful new book, Still Writing, are here.

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Still Writing/Dani Shapiro: Reflections

When I set out to write Handling the Truth, I burrowed in with the books that I have always loved—built a minor cathedral with printed paper, stiff spines, glue. Memoirs, specifically. Books that had taught me something or reinforced something, that exemplified, were exemplary.

One of those loved books was Dani Shapiro's Devotion, a memoir that, as I wrote here years ago, felt pure to me, spun from a sacred, silent place. Dani's book became one of the nearly 100 books I celebrate in the pages of Handling. Her prose offering an essential lesson in quiet generosity.

When I learned that Dani was publishing a book called Still Writing, I knew that something significant was about to make its way into the hands of writers all around the world. I trusted that she would write with both clarity and beauty, that she would open her heart, that she would not hide, that she would elevate writing advice to profoundly intelligent writing insight. All this she does, seamlessly, in a book that is destined to be a classic.

Reading Still Writing is like sitting with a best friend who gets you—really gets you. Someone in whom you might confide, someone with whom you might look out upon a garden space, silently. Yes, you hear yourself saying, I have been there. Yes, I've felt lost, too, uncertain, crushed, but also moved, privileged, calmed, finally certain in the midst of making a book. Wisdom, honesty, and reach abide in Still Writing. But so does companionship.

As one who teaches as well, who writes about words, who sometimes writes her own stories, I felt so aligned with Dani as I read that I'm afraid I sometimes spoke out loud while reading. I loved many passages. Let me share just one. It's the sort of advice I've tried to share with many writers throughout the years. But Dani says it better:

There's nothing wrong with ambition. We all want to win Guggenheims and live and write in the south of France, or some version thereof—don't we? But this can't be the goal. If we are thinking of our work as a ticket to a life of literary glamour, we really ought to consider doing something else.

Still Writing will be published in October by Grove Atlantic.

Dani and I will appear together on stage, for a conversation about the writing life—Still Writing/Handling the Truth—at the First Person Arts Festival in November in Philadelphia. Details here. 

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It's Not Love, It's Just Paris/Patricia Engel: Reflections

Anyone who had the privilege of reading Patricia Engel's collection of stories, Vida, knew for sure: a new true writer had emerged, and attention was to be paid. Oh, the sentences, I kept murmuring, as I read. Oh, the heartbreaking sentences. (My thoughts on Vida are here.)

At the BEA two weeks ago, I came home with just three books—Someone by Alice McDermott (the immaculate surprise of that book shared here), Still Writing by Dani Shapiro, and It's Not Love, It's Just Paris by Patricia Engel. Who could need more?

Engel's first novel is the story of an American girl (though indeed, for this is an Engel tale, and Engel is deeply entrenched in many languages and multiple cultures, the heroine is a Colombian American girl) in Paris. Lita del Cielo lives in the "House of Stars" under the care of an aging countess and in the company of other young women with international blood and sure ideas about love. She is a faithful daughter, a skipped-two-grades academic, a girl who wears her one good dress to a safe length below her knees. She is the sort of person who can judge the quality of a friendship by the silence it can withstand, and while the girls in the house go about their notching affairs, Lita waits, ghostwrites term papers for a sustaining fee, helps a young waiter perfect his English. Mostly she watches, and she listens, tries to make sense of the lessons brought to the worn down, still-haughty home of the stars.

Here, for example, Lita is having a conversation with a housemate with whom "you weren't required to respond in order for her to have a full conversation."

"But you see, men are born guilty Women are built to forgive and love and forgive all over again. Men are built for war and because we live in mostly peaceful times, they just turn on themselves. My point is you have to learn to get through life without being sentimental about boys because they are never worth the trouble."

But of course Lita does find a boy—imperfect and mysterious, capable of silence, slow to assume and long to love. He is the son of a notorious politician. His mother is dead and he is ill. He lives by himself near the sea, finds city noise and dust endangering. Lita has only come to Paris for a year. She has come certain that she will return to the family who needs her, but Paris changes everyone and Paris changes Lita.

This is a book filled with incomparable sentences, a book so international in its aura, so mysterious in its trajectory, so veiled and so specific at once. Yearning is a universal language. Paris just after Princess Diana's death, in a house of many languages, through the eyes of an unchastened soul, is resolutely particular. I read in awe of Engel's ability to bridge so seamlessly between the two—to burrow so deeply into the story itself and to transcend with great swaths of sudden truth.

My galley is wildly dog-earred. Here, below, one of many additional passages that I loved:

And then I understood that between us there was a common spore of isolation that grew in my overpopulated home and within his quiet cottage. We were young but we'd both grown well into our loneliness. We were the kind of lonely that wasn't ashamed to be so. A lonely without self-penitence.

It's Not Love, It's Just Paris is set to launch on the same day—August 6th—as Handling the Truth, a book birthday we also share with Cool Gray City of Love by Gary Kamiya, whose San Francisco I've observed from the balcony of his home in the hills.

I'm thinking cake. In the meantime, huge congratulations to Patricia Engel, for doing it, again.

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Summer Reading (and last day for the HANDLING contest)

With work on the first draft of my last novel now done, I can, as I mentioned a few days ago, turn to the piles upon piles of books that have been waiting for me. (As well as all the titles I've downloaded on my iPad.)

Recently I have shared my thoughts on Caroline Leavitt's Is This Tomorrow, Katie Haegele's White Elephants, Chloe Aridjis's Asunder, Jessica Keener's Night Swim, Marie Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Susan Tekulve's In the Garden of Stone, and Elizabeth Graver's End of the Point.    

Throughout the next few months, you'll be hearing from me on books like the following:

Someone, Alice McDermott
The World is a Carpet, Anna Badkhen
It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, Patricia Engel
Still Writing, Dani Shapiro
Country Girl, Edna O'Brien
Reality Boy, A.S. King
The News from Spain, Joan Wickersham
Norwegian by Night, Derek Miller
Grace Before Dying, Lori Waselchuk
River of Dust, Virginia Pye
Perfect Red, Jennie Nash
Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo
Yesterday's Weather, Anne Enright
Some Nerve, Patty Chang Anker
Margot, Jillian Cantor


I'll also be sharing thoughts on a number of classic memoirs.

Speaking of which: Today is your last day to enter to win my last copy of Handling the Truth. The details are here.

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celebrating Patricia Hampl and other fine memoirists in HANDLING THE TRUTH

In returning the proof pages of Handling the Truth to Gotham yesterday, I relinquished all further control over the story.  No more changes.  No allowable regrets.  The book will soon be set in stone and released next August.

One of my greatest joys, in writing Handling the Truth, was the chance it gave me to celebrate the many memoirs—true memoirs, not autobiographies—that have inspired me throughout the years.  Natalie Kusz is there—the author of the first memoir I ever read.  C.K. Williams.  Marie Arana.  Mary Karr.  Anthony Shadid.  bell hooks.  Katrina Kenison.  Darin Strauss.  Dani Shapiro.  Rahna Reiko Rizzuto.  Buzz Bissinger.  Colleen Mondor.  Sy Montgomery.  Chris Offutt.  Elizabeth McCracken.  Lucy Grealy.  So many others. 

But no book about the making of memoir would ever be complete without a celebration of Patricia Hampl, who has done so much to shape the form.  Here, above, is a glimpsed moment.

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Devotion/Dani Shapiro: Reflections

What could a book called Devotion be about?  Devotion to whom, or to what?  Devotion because of...?, or instead of...?  Devotion as religion, or as a way of life?

In the quiet, so-elegant prose of Dani Shapiro, devotion is another word for quest.  It is the journey to know—and to reckon with not knowing—how one lives in a world of risks, in a body aging, in the vessel of uncertainty.  Having reached the middle-middle of her life, having left the city for the country, having raised a little boy who beat the odds of a rare and dangerous disorder, having achieved much as both a novelist and a memoirist (and also a screenwriter), Dani Shaprio wakes from her sleep full of worries and lists.  Her jaw quakes.  Her thoughts slide.  She gets caught up in the stuff of life and then—and then—she worries.

Shapiro was the child of a deeply religious household, and she doesn't know what she believes.  She is the mother of a boy asking questions, simple, impossible questions about God and heaven and sin.  She should know something, shouldn't she?  She should have something definitive to offer.  But what, in the end, is rock solid, sure?  What bolsters us, protects us, from vicissitudes and chance?

"It wasn't so much that I was in search of answers," Shapiro writes.  "In fact, I was wary of the whole idea of answers.  I wanted to climb all the way inside the questions and see what was there."  Revisiting the orthodoxy of her Jewish past, taking time for meditation and retreats, seeking more and more from her long-practice of yoga, Shapiro makes herself vulnerable to possibilities.  She yields, more and more, to present time, the unrepeatable eachness of each moment.

Sentence by sentence, this is a beautiful book—considered and (the word kept occurring, so I'll use it) pure.  Structurally, it is magnificent, scenes abutting scenes, time cutting into time, small threads woven into a greater tapestry.  One wants to know Shapiro, as one reads this book—one wants to talk about all that can't be puzzled through, all the losses one can't stop, all the hurt that will go on and on, no matter how "smart" we are about our living.  We never really do have more than one another, and that is what Shapiro comes to.  Shapiro's book, itself, is a hand outstretched, an open door, a place to dwell.   

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Memoir Fetish (welcoming these new titles to my memoir library)

My appetite for books is insatiable, always, and when I teach, buying and reading memoir is a seamless compulsion.  Every student is on her own course.  Every young writer must be guided to just the right books at the right time.  To a memoir library already teeming, I this week add the following titles:

Devotion, Dani Shapiro

Mentor: A Memoir, Tom Grimes

How to Live:  Or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell (yes, this is a biography, but it is a biography of one of our most iconic early memoirists)

History of a Suicide, Jill Bialosky

The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (I need a new copy)

Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf

House of Prayer No. 2:  A Writer's Journey Home, Mark Richard

Townie:  A Memoir, Andre Dubus III

Duke of Deception:  Memories of My Father, Geoffrey Wolff (hugely ashamed that I have not read this before)

Say Her Name, Francisco Goldman (classified as a novel, much like Dave Eggers classified his own memoirish story as a novel; my reflections on this book were posted two days ago)

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