In which I answer the question...

What have you been up to?
(a question posed by Readergirlz)

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On Becoming the readergirlz Author in Residence

Would you consider, author and readergirlz co-founder Lorie Ann Grover wrote to me last May, being our readergirlz Author in Residence from September through December? Writing a monthly blog about the writing life? Participating in readergirlz chats? Attending a live online party?

I did not have to think twice. This is readergirlz—perhaps the most esteemed site for young adult readers in the world. It's the brain child of Justina Chen Headley, Dia Calhoun, Holly Cupala, Melissa Walker, and Lorie Ann herself, with no small support from the postergirlz, Little Willow (who makes it all happen technically), Jackie, Miss Erin, ShelfElf, and HipWriterMama. There's real content on this site—deep plunges into the world of good books—and I've been honored to come to know these creators and doers over the past many months.

So here I am—the first official readergirlz author in residence. I'll have vlogs for you about writing themes—as well as writing contests. Please do stay tuned.

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And Then I Cried

There was hardly a soul in the restaurant last night by the time my husband and I made our way to it. The streets were thick with ice and the snow that had been falling all day long kept rising back up with the wind and snapping. I had my blackberry with me because I always do, because it is my one connection across hundreds of miles to my son; I want to be near if he wants to talk. And so there we were, and there was the blackberry, and there was cold outside and a certain emptiness in my heart—a sadness stemming from news encountered earlier in the day.

Toward the end of the meal (appetizers, only), that little red blackberry light went off, and I checked to see to whom it might belong. It was Little Willow, of all people, a forerunner blogger of forerunner bloggers, who was out there doing smart book talk in advance of most of the world.

Guess who has a book recommended in this month's issue of readergirlz? she wrote. You do! You do! The postergirlz picked UNDERCOVER as a recommended read, along with our main March pick, THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX by Mary E. Pearson.

I try hard not to cry at things that are not life and death related, but no amount of resolve stopped my tears with this. Because who are those readergirlz? They are Lorie Ann Grover, dancer, writer, illustrator, thinker. They are Justina Chen Headley, former executive and now author of such supremely successful and lovely, intelligent books as NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL, her latest, which earned three starred reviews and is getting incredible responses across the blogosophere. They are Melissa Walker, and we all know Melissa—beloved author of the VIOLET series and fashionista, who reports on her Manhattan travels so that the rest of us can be voyeurs. They are Dia Calhoun, the acclaimed authoress, and Holly Cupala, whose first novel is due out in 2010. And in essential supporting roles there are those like Miss Little Willow herself, HipWriterMama (a blogger I admired for so long from afar, a writer, and interviewer extraordinaire), and the delightfully popular Miss Erin, rising actress and poet and friend (and daughter of sometimes actress, rising photographer, and always friend Sherry!).

They are, in other words, women I have long respected. Women who are out there making a difference with their voices and their opinions.

UNDERCOVER stands as a March pick among books that I'd be proud to be associated with on any day of any week: MEMOIRS OF A TEENAGE AMNESIAC, FRANKENSTEIN, GRACELING, NOT QUITE WHAT I WAS PLANNING: SIX-WORD MEMOIRS BY WRITERS FAMOUS AND OBSCURE, and WALDEN.

I don't know about you, but sometimes electronic hugs, as first delivered upon my heart by Anna Lefler, are not enough.

Still:

(((thank you)))

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Introducing Little Willow

I've been searching for an image to accompany my conversation with Little Willow, and at last I have settled on this—a girl with the whole wide world in her hands, a bastion of yellow. For that, in my mind, is who Little Willow is, an unusually supercharged cultural sprite who reads a book a day while designing web sites and listening to music, her dance shoes by the door, her cats and what I imagine to be a pup milling about by the window sill. Little Willow's industry—as a critic, as a performer, as an encourager—is astonishing, but more astonishing, and important, is the quality of what she produces, the consideration she gives to the work at immediate hand. Visit her web site, read her blog, her reviews, her interviews, and you'll see what I mean.

http://www.slayground.net/yourgirl/

You have published non-fiction, published music, appeared on panels, sat on editorial boards, designed masterful web sites and icons, referenced an absolute love of musical theater, talked about dancing, and published more book reviews on sites like GoodReads and Amazon than anyone I know. What do you count as your greatest achievement?

Being a good daughter, a good sister, and a good friend, and being true to myself.

Your second greatest achievement?

I am not certain. There are many things I'd like to achieve, and I'm looking forward to making those things happen.

How do you focus on the pace, flow, feeling of a book (because most books I know take a while to read, and a silent place in which to read them) while keeping your finger on the pulse of so many other things?

I've always moved at a rapid pace: I think, read, speak, and walk quickly. On average, I read a book a day. Unless I am asleep, I am constantly multi-tasking.

Early in your career you took an exquisite interest in Buffy the Vampire Slayer? What was it about that series that so thoroughly captivated you?

I've always enjoyed supernatural stories and shows that were thoughtful and creative, such as TheTwilight Zone and The X-Files, rather than those which were gory and free of substance. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a lot to say about the world and about people, using monsters as metaphors for very real fears. I feel as though it was strongest and most poignant in seasons two and three. The show - along with the aforementioned series and additional works - left an impression on me, and fueled my already-present (lifelong!) interest in both the genre and in making my own television series (and other stories).

Is Little Willow a brand? An idea? A sign?

Little Willow is my screen name online. The first day I signed online was in early 1997, shortly after BtVS started airing. When I visited the BtVS website and saw the posting board there, I realized that I needed an online handle. (I knew that, for safety's sake, people used screen names rather than posting real names online.) I quickly decided upon Little Willow, with Willow being the name of a character on the show, adding Little simply because I was younger and shorter than the actress who portrayed her. At that time, I was glad to see a character who celebrated book smarts and school smarts and embraced her intelligence rather than being ashamed of it. Sadly, Willow took what I felt was a downhill course in later seasons. Though I no longer related to the character, I kept the username because I was known for it by that point, and everything I'd done online was associated with it.

What is art to you? What is the perfect song, the perfect story? For what do you preserve the five-star review?

Art cannot be qualified nor quantified definitively. It comes in so many different forms, and means different things to different people. To me, art is many things, including the forms I pursue, such as singing, dancing, acting, and writing, and those I appreciate but don't engage in (or haven't had the chance to really try yet), such as photography and painting. I salute anyone who is creative, original, especially those who see or think of things that others don't initially perceive or understand, then do something to enable the world to see it or learn it - Talent, enthusiasm and knowledge are gifts meant to be shared.... If I give a book, an album, or a film five stars, I found the piece meaningful, I enjoyed it from start to finish, and I think it is truly good.

You have such a broad range of favorites listed on your site—fascinating touchstone works. Talk a little bit about music who you love to listen to, and why.

My favorite contemporary singer-songwriters are the Duncan Sheik and Jonatha Brooke. My favorite Duncan song: She Runs Away. My favorite Jonatha album: Ten Cent Wings. I'm musical theatre girl, as you know. I'd much rather watch Singin' in the Rain than listen to mainstream radio. :) Oh, I'll stop myself now, because if I don't, I'm just going to keep rattling off bands and artists like Velvet Chain (best album: Moody Groove Music), Jimmy Eat World, Nickel Creek (first album), Holly Brook, Ricky Nelson (now THERE's a truly Best of album), Amy Studt, John Barry (I still can't find the album I want, his soundtrack to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), Bernard Herrmann...

Where have you never been that you want to someday be?

In order to work with Gene Kelly during the heydays of MGM or visit Ancient Egypt, I'd need a time machine. Perhaps I'll run into the Doctor and take a trip on the TARDIS. (Or perhaps I'll just appear on the show Doctor Who. I would love that!) Realistically, I don't have a big desire to travel. If I make it as a singer, perhaps I'll tour. Though I'm not a big city girl and couldn't see myself living in New York for fun, I could be there for business, as I hope to have the opportunity to perform on Broadway someday! I want to work in film and television in addition to appearing in plays and musicals, so I'll go where those take me, but home is where the heart is, I think.

Where would you never go?

Any place that compromised my morals, comfort, or health, or that of others.

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The Room of Dance and Words

What if your books could talk to each other: What would they say? What if your characters could all slidhoptumblemosey down, leap their own pages? That cat-loving neighbor. That defiant divorcee. That vanished father. That lonesome ice skater. That grandfather facing his final hour. That Spanish nurse. That English teacher, Dr. Charmin. That art restorer. That recluse. That little girl in Anapra. That striped-stocking adventuress known to Zenobians as Moira.

Would they, the question becomes, defy, convey, embrace, congeal? Would they fall in love?

Little Willow stirred the pot for me on this. She said, an email, I'll put your books together on my shelf so that they might whisper to each other. Hmm, well, and there it was. I've been imagining ever since.

Here is the room in which my characters would mingle. A room set aside for dance and words.

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The UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE Interview with Little Willow

A week ago, I was interviewed by Little Willow, a conversation about which I promptly posted. Today I'm running excerpts from that interview here (in apology for my failure to hotlink it previously). Many thanks again, Little Willow.

Interview: Beth Kephart

Beth Kephart has written poetry, memoirs, and more. Her most recent works, Undercover and House of Dance, are novels for teens. We discussed the difficulties of putting pen to paper and sharing personal stories with the world.

You have noted that some real-life experiences inspired characters and events in your novels. Is it harder to imagine the lives of others or to immortalize those you've known?

Perhaps the hardest thing is to find fluency between the known and the imagined - to move seamlessly between what has been lived and what has been projected. When you draw from real life for the purposes of fiction, you have to be willing to discard details that have mattered deeply, to blur edges of the truth, to shape newly. You have to be willing to get lost, to not know. When you imagine you have to take another kind of risk, the could-it-actually-happen-like-this-feel-like-this risk. You're high on a tightrope, the entire book through.

In UNDERCOVER, the kernel of truth was that I have always been a facilitator of one sort of another. Someone who forges bridges, connects people or possibilities, while often standing off in the margins. Guys I often liked myself, hoped for for myself, would come to me, earnest and honest, asking advice on how to attract the true girl of their dreams. I grew up to be a consultant, a ghostwriter for executives, a whisper in an ear. This, and the fact that I ice skated and that I had a wise English teacher, is the real life stuff of UNDERCOVER. But certainly my real high school teacher would not see herself in UNDERCOVER's Dr. Charmin, and certainly I never knew a Theo. And Elisa, finally, is far more talented as a poet than I ever was.

It has now been ten years since the release of A Slant of Sun, five since Still Love in Strange Places. How has your writing style changed over the years?

Wow, well, that's an incredible question. I try not to think about this too much, try not to categorize my own work, put it into any sort of box. My first book was never intended to be a book; it was a series of essays that I was writing for my son, that I would read to him so that he would know just how much he taught me, how deeply he is loved. The publishing of SLANT came from a simple, naïve desire -- to bind those pages into a book and to throw a party for all those who had made such a difference in our lives. STILL LOVE IN STRANGE PLACES began as a novel about El Salvador and became, over 15 years, a memoir, for there was an instance where the risk of imagining seemed too great, the possibility of getting some part of it wrong too extreme. So I started over, and simply wrote the truth.

The young adult novels -- they are different. They come to me more quickly, they feel somewhat lighter on their feet, I feel more free when I write them, for I am not bound to getting the truth just right (my memoirs tend to be deeply researched, in addition to being deeply lived), nor must I look over my shoulder, wondering who might read them, who might misinterpret them, who might judge them. Memoirs are such tricky business -- they have to be truthful, yes. But also, at least for me, they cannot hurt anyone.

Every book requires its own voice; I think that's true. So that when I wrote FLOW: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILADELPHIA'S SCHUYLKILL RIVER, I moved into deeply poetic, sometimes tangled terrain, for this is a book in which a river tells her own story. When I wrote ZENOBIA, a corporate fable, I adopted a whole new sound. Right now I'm writing an historical novel for adults, and here again the language is entirely new (and of course I'm back inside deep research once again).

It's a privilege experimenting with it all.

Some of the poems and pieces in Undercover were previously published. When did you decide to incorporate them into this novel - or did they inspire the novel itself?

Hmmm. Another fantastic question, and let me think about this to be sure I get it right. Here's the sequence, as I recall: I had a three month jag of terrible insomnia, truly went days without so much as an hour of sleep, and then I'd sleep that hour, and the insomnia would start again. Desperate, I began to write poems to calm me down; I hadn't written any in years. Soon the nights were okay again, for I looked forward to writing the poems, and as I wrote the poems I began to remember my life as a teen poet. I didn't think of turning any of this into a novel until I had a conversation with Laura Geringer, an editor at HarperTeen. But the poems were deep within me as I started UNDERCOVER.

House of Dance, coming out in June 2008, captures the slow-quick-quick movement of life and loss. Tell us about the dance lessons and life lessons which inspired this book.

Ah, well. I have spent my whole life inside music, one way or the other, dancing alone in the morning here - a form of meditation and exercise. But then my husband began watching Dancing with the Stars, and he was intrigued by the challenge of ballroom dancing. For my birthday he bought us lessons at a studio down the road. He soon chose to take lessons on his own (wanting more time to learn to lead), and so I too began taking more lessons on my own, and now that studio is like a second home for us both. I've been dancing for two years now, and I love the bolero, the rumba, the waltz, the tango, finally feel settled within the cha-cha and salsa, and find the samba a continuing challenge.

We happen to dance at an extraordinary place, with extraordinary talents, including the nation's top amateur rhythm champion. I'm currently taking lessons from an exquisite dancer who hails from Russia; he and his wife were recent Rising Star champions, and, oh my goodness, it's unbelievable what he can do and what he knows. Dance is its own sort of intelligence, and I learn so much from these people that I'm privileged to dance with.

I've also, by the way, become involved with the Dancing Classrooms program that inspired the documentary Mad, Hot Ballroom. If you want to be reminded of the pure glory that is still within reach, go see these kids dance. It's mind-blowing.

I'm a dancer moved by tap, character, jazz, and musical theatre. What is your favorite form of dance?

At the moment, ballroom, just because I've had the chance to learn its language, just because it's starting to make some sense to me now. But I have enormous respect for any kind of dancing, truly. I find it mesmerizing.

Undercover has foxes; House of Dance has the fox-trot. What will your next books have to offer, and when will they be released?

Your question makes me smile. THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE will take readers to a squatter's village in Juarez, Mexico; it asks the question: What can we really do to help heal the world?

But before HEART will be NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, due out next winter, which is the story of a high school senior grappling with the death of her mother. GHOSTS involves the decoding of a mystery in a garden down the road. There are small touches of mystery all the way through, and a finch, which is GHOSTS' fox.

What are ten of your favorite books?

Well, I'll make this list, and tomorrow I'll wish I'd put something else on, but at this very moment, trolling through my memory...

Running in the Family, Michael Ondaatje
Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
The Wild Braid, Stanley Kunitz
Bone, Fae Myenne Ng
Reading in the Dark, Seamus Deane
The Journey Home, Olaf Olafsson
Road Song, Natalie Kusz
Zoli, Colum McCann
Coming through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje
So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell

http://slayground.livejournal.com/335269.html

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Interviewed by Little Willow (and grateful for the conversation)

There are some fiercely well-read and thoughtful people out here, in the land of the blog, and one of those is Little Willow, whose blog I've visited, admired (she's an artist, on top of being a reader and a writer; she's a dancer, too). This weekend I had the privilege of sitting down to a virtual conversation with her. She made me think, asked me questions no one ever has.

The result of that conversation, along with Little Willow's reviews of both UNDERCOVER and HOUSE OF DANCE, can be found here.

http://slayground.livejournal.com/335269.html

Thank you, Little Willow.

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