my deep thanks to Cleaver Magazine and Rachael Tague, for these words on STORY

Sometimes you are kindly, wholly received.

This just happened with This Is the Story of You.

Cleaver Magazine, the wildly popular on-line lit spot co-created by Karen Rile and featured here, in newest issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette, made room for Story. Melissa Sarno, novelist, critic, and Cleaver YA book review editor, assigned Story. Rachael Tague, an incredibly generous reviewer, gave Story her heart.

You can read the full review here. Once you are inside Cleaver, take a look around. Click through to all the content that awaits you.

(You won't regret a single click.)

Manymanymanymany thanks.

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I cried real tears when I read these words (about One Thing Stolen)

I can't tell you how much I love this book, how in awe I sat of this story, an elaborate nest of its own. I'd copy every beautiful sentence from this novel and leave it here for you, but that is the gift of Kephart's book, sitting with its soft feathered pages. This book is not a tangle. It is an incredible, careful, deliberate weave. Ribbons and strands of story coming together to create something exquisite and beautiful. Like Nadia's very first steal, which involves taking apart the words and language she is losing her grip on and braiding it back together in pieces, this book is a similar, spectacular creation.

From This Too (the full review is here).

To have been understood. So thoroughly. Like this. To be taken into Melissa's own life, heart, mind, travels.

Thank you, Melissa Sarno.

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on seeing Bill Cunningham in person (!!), silvered friendship, good news for my son, the Caldecott Panel

There was no evidence of a bicycle, but Bill Cunningham, New York Times style photographer and the subject of this amazing documentary (watched here because Melissa Sarno gave me the word), was out among the nearly 200 craftspeople at the 38th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show.

He just kept passing by—lanky and tipping up on his toes, camera in hand, a coy smile when someone called out, "Are you Bill Cunningham?" Oh, jeepers, his smile said, recognized again. He just kept looking and nodding, his presence electrifying the crowd. Bill Cunningham in Philadelphia. Yes, we Philadelphians felt proud.

Meanwhile, I bought a glorious something from Cathy Rose of New Orleans (worth taking a look at this link, truly her work is remarkable)—an addition to my small but growing doll and mask collection. Meanwhile, my husband and I went off for a Reading Terminal lunch—Salumeri's, of course. Meanwhile, we returned to a lit-up sky and I slipped out for a Kelly Simmons rendezvous—a gir's afternoon, silver and gold. When I returned home, walking a brisk dark, a full moon rising, my son called with deliriously good news. You want to know the definition of perseverance, creativity, optimism, extreme hard work, and lessons in hopefulness? I will tell you the story of these past few months and my son. I will tell you everything he taught me, and I will say, again and for the record, I would be half the person that I am without him.

Today I'm off to the woods to teach memoir at the Schuylkill Center, part of the Musehouse Writing Retreat. I'll slip away afterward to see my friend Karen Rile. And then I'll come home and get ready for tomorrow, when I'll see my dear friend Jennifer Brown moderating the Caldecott panel—Chris Van Allsburg, David Wiesner, and Brian Selznick—at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood. (Two o'clock, and hosted by Children's Book World.)

And then I, like the rest of the world, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I will just sit and think on it all.

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White Space Memoirs: Creative Nonfiction Arrives (and I have HANDLING toes)

I wrote about this essay (and excerpted its first paragraph) not long ago, here, but I didn't hold the magazine in my hands until just now.

I know we live in a virtual world. But how happy I am when published on paper, and especially when published in a magazine of this caliber. Thank you, Hattie Fletcher and Creative Nonfiction. I loved writing this.

And thank you, Melissa Sarno, for the Handling the Truth polish. Leave to Sarno. Head to toes.

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a lot of wonder at Books of Wonder

Books of Wonder did teen lit proud yesterday as it paneled widely varied authors, provoked a fine mix of strong opinions, and, as Allen Zadoff put it, reeled seven in-person book trailers for seven (or eight, depending on how you were counting) summer reads.

We had a glorious turn-out, and among those who joined us were my friends Patty Chang Anker (see my review of her forthcoming Some Nerve here), Jessica Francis Kane (whose novel (The Report) and story collection (This Close) I loved), and Melissa Sarno, whose novel has just gone out into the world under the auspices of her wonder-ful agent. We photographed Melissa, but that photo was a bit blurred.

(Also, I never got a photo of Tonya Hurley, but she was definitely there among us, and we were so grateful to have her in the house; Tonya and Peter may even go on a road show together, at least according to my listening ears.)

A huge round of thanks to the great Peter Glassman of Books of Wonder, who gave us all such a wonder-ful day.

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Dr. Radway is most generously read by Melissa Sarno

You know that part in the magnificent Gail Caldwell memoir Let's Take the Long Way Home, in which Gail is reflecting on an early juncture in her friendship with the writer Caroline Knapp? Gail, the older, more established writer, has been engaged with Caroline's work. Caroline has asked for Gail to read; Caroline has asked for Gail's opinion; Gail has reliably responded.

Caroline, however, has never said a word about the work Gail has done, and the vulnerability of not knowing, the inequality of the playing field, has begun to rub away at Gail. Finally Gail asks, "I have to ask you something difficult—I need to know what you think about my work." Caroline, fortunately, is right there with a reassuring, loving answer.

Melissa Sarno, a young woman I met at a BEA exhibit years ago, a young woman whose writing impresses not just me, but her many blog fans and her brand new agent (wait until you someday read Melissa's Coney Island novel), is one of those people who has never left me wondering. She has, indeed, been a most generous, and perceptive, reader of my work, and I will be forever grateful.

Last evening, late, Melissa wrote to tell me that she had read a book she knows means the world to me, a book with a quiet release, a book I still have high hopes for—Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. Melissa read and took the time to post these words about the book on her fabulous blog, and to share her favorite paragraph. A few lines from Melissa's blog here, below. I am moved, as a friend and a writer, by the whole.

Thank you so much, Melissa Sarno.

That is what I love, love, love about this book.  The fullness and richness of this writhing adventure. Each sentence swells with the endurance of characters that are, in many ways, running on empty, past empty, but with their hearts bursting full at their worn seams.

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Tomorrow: A Day so Full, so Rich

5:26 AM Train to Philadelphia

6:30 AM Train to NYC

8:30 AM Pre-conference conversations with my dear friends Jennifer Brown (our nation's ambassador for children's books), Laura Geringer (editor of five of my YA books), Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (a very dear friend with whom I have strolled so much of New York (and Central Park)), and Melissa Sarno (the fab blogger at This, Too, and the brain child behind the title of Handling the Truth). I'll also have the great pleasure of seeing, again, Ed Nawotka and Dennis Abrams of Publishing Perspectives and, later, Eliot Schrefer. 

9:30 AM Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers:  Tomorrow's YA/
Publishing Perspectives Conference, Keynote Address, Scholastic Building, New York City

10:30 AM: Drawing the Line: What's the Difference Between a YA and an Adult Book?/
Publishing Perspectives Conference Panel, with Andrew Losowsky, Books Editor, Huffington Post, Aimee Friedman, Senior Editor, Scholastic Trade, Elizabeth Perle, Editor, Huffington Post Youth Network, and Dan Weiss, Editor-at-large, St. Martin's Press

2:00 PM  Marketing meeting with the very good people of Gotham/Penguin (launching Handling the Truth next August)

3:15ish PM  Grabbing a hug from the one and only Jessica Shoffel of Philomel/Penguin (who took such good care of Small Damages)

4:40 PM Train from NYC to Philly, second train from Philly to Bryn Mawr in time to see...

7:30 PM  Anne Lamott, speaking at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, where I will be joined by Deacon Supreme, my own father, Horace Kephart

I will do nothing on Thursday, or almost nothing.  But tomorrow, I will leap, headlong.

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Adding two new books to my scattershot world, including A Northern Light

I was escaping on Thursday as I made my way to the bookstore.  The heat, a particular conversation, a pedigreed failure.  In the summer, at bookstores, I tend to stand among those tables dedicated to middle- and high-school reading lists—looking at all that I've missed, scorning my own piecemeal education, regretting my only partially successful autodidactism.  I studied the history and sociology of science at Penn.  I teach memoir.  I review (mostly) adult literary fiction.  I have (most recently) been writing young adult fiction that is perhaps not really young adult fiction.  I started out as a poet.  I am currently researching the heck out of Bruce Springsteen.  My triple-stacked bookshelves reflect my scattershot world.  Despite the fact that I have tried, since I was a teen, to read at least three books a week (and, later in life, The New Yorker, New York Times, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and the book review sections of The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer), I have a whole lot of gaps, always, to fill.  I am embarrassed, often, by my own not-knowingness.  I could not pass any test that might be given.

Thursday, ignoring the criminally ignored two dozen as-yet-unread books stacked on my office floor, I bought two more—A Northern Light, which Melissa Sarno recommended, and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.  I have read all of Capote except In Cold Blood.  Don't ask why; it just happened.

Yesterday, between bouts of Springsteen research, I read A Northern Light, a young adult novel written by Jennifer Donnelly, which was a Printz Honor Book when it was released ten years ago, earned numerous additional citations, and continues to be extremely well read today.  Set in 1906 and featuring Mattie, a sixteen-year-old farm-bound girl who loves words, A Northern Light is, I found, an instructive book—thoroughly researched, strategically structured, seeded with the right kind of issues for young readers of historical fiction (feminism, race relations, the value of education and literature).  I loved, most of all, Donnelly's Weaver, an African American adolescent.  Weaver has much to say, and Donnelly, wisely, gives him room—to be smart, to be angry, to be hopeful, to be Mattie's truest friend. Boy-girl friendships that are honest and meaningful and yet not tinged with erotic desire are so rare in books, and especially rare in young adult literature, and so I was happy to spend some time on this warm weekend making this acquaintance.

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Melissa Sarno on Small Damages

Melissa Sarno (you have heard me speak of Melissa Sarno and her blog, This Too... ) was away, and we missed her.  She was away because she'd married the man she loves and traveled with him to a country I love, and we were happy for her, but we missed her.

She is home now.  She is home bearing gifts—photographs and stories and this most astonishing review of Small Damages, which she read a few days before her wedding.

You can tell, I know you can, that Melissa is a writer, too.  A very special one—her work full of color and empathy and musical sophistication.  Her review contains these words.  They made me cry. 

I think a lot of people would say that it takes courage to embrace who you are. But, I believe, it takes even more courage to walk away from who you are in order to find out who you can be.  To capture that in these few words means they are everything words.  To explore this theme in a book means Small Damages is an everything book.

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Sarno, Truth, Sorkin: the deeds are done

Two things happened this week:  My friend Melissa Sarno got married to a beautiful man (and since she is a very beautiful woman, this is a heaven-made match) and I (as of a few hours ago) finished the first full draft of HANDLING THE TRUTH.

This may seem like a random pairing, but it is not, for it is dear and wise and good Melissa who, with a bit of Facebook jesting one lazy day, delivered unto me this book's title.  She posted this "A Few Good Men" video snatch on my wall.  She dared me.  It was all over after that.  It seems especially fitting that these infamous movie lines were crafted by Aaron Sorkin, who gave the perfect commencement speech at my son's university two weekends ago. 

To purple (Melissa's favorite color).  To truth.  To intelligent jesting.  And (we shall never forget) to Aaron Sorkin. 

To sleeping in tomorrow.

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Joining Twitter

On this day of enforced rest (doctor's orders following an unpretty breakdown of all still-working parts), I am spending idle time doing fun things like finishing Mary Karr's The Liar's Club and, yes, joining Twitter.

Come be part of my Tweet world.  Help me understand howit works.  Make me smarter when people say "hashtag." I need to be smarter when people say "hashtag."  And also "trending."

Here I am (I think this is right).  I have a grand total of three tweets and a handful of very fine friends.  Leave it to Melissa Sarno to find me first!

@BethKephart

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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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our brains on great literature, with the emphasis on great

Truth be told, I'm still struggling in these parts, and hence the sluggishness of my blog presence.  I do hope to regain my perky self (Was I ever perky? Is it even appropriate at my age to be perky?).  But between now and then, I would like to share two news items (both from the New York Times) that friends have sent my way.  My taste, my interests must be verging on the transparent.

Story number one:  Draft.  This is the new Times Opinionator feature that promises "essays by grammarians, historians, linguists, journalists, novelists and others on the art of writing—from the comma to the tweet to the novel—and why a well-crafted sentence matters more than ever in the digital age."  Jhumpa Lahiri's gorgeous piece "My Life's Sentences" recalled, for the ever-lovely Melissa Sarno, a piece I had written here, about my obsession with the construct.  (Thank you, Melissa, for making me famous today.)

Story number two:  Your Brain on Fiction.  This Annie Murphy Paul essay on reading and the effects it has on our brains reinforces what those of us who have defended lies and lie telling (well, we have defended novels) have been saying all along:  "Reading great literature...enlarges and improves us as human beings."

I personally think the "great" matters in that Annie Murphy Paul essay.  Which takes me straight back to my obsession with crafting fine sentences.  Not easy sentences.  Not obvious ones.  Not the ones you've seen plenty of times before.  But the ones that make us think.

Thank you, Melissa, Mandy, Paul, and Bonnie for making sure I see the good stuff.  Thank you, Melissa, for pairing me with Jhumpa herself.

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the day in pictures

it began early.  it moved through rain.  my hair broomed up around my head.  my client was so kind.  and then lovely Melissa Sarno met me in her princess cape of purple and we walked until my hair was a cloud and I was on the train home again.

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Talking about Connectivity, Melissa Sarno, and a Stealth You Are My Only Giveaway

I want to talk for a moment about connections—about the way one thing leads to the next.

The story starts with this blog, begun in a vacuum in 2007, begun with absolutely no idea of what a blog might reap, or what a blog should be.  (As you can probably tell, I am still figuring that out.)

Somewhere along the way, somehow, the magnificent My Friend Amy found her way here.  And because My Friend Amy had, scores of others did, too.  My Friend Amy is that kind of gal.

Among the My Friend Amy coterie was one Melissa Sarno, now a dear, amazing, smart, funny, treasured friend.  Melissa is a writer and producer for a toy company by day, as she will tell you on her exceedingly intelligent blog.  She is a fiction writer by (extremely late) night.  In between she keeps me laughing with her tales and her adventures, her threats to visit upon me the world's best pairing of cookies and wine, say, or a perilously stacked cone of ice cream.  Twice Melissa has stood before me live and in person at the BEA.  Always I learn from her.

Last week, Melissa was away.  Yesterday she was at a certain tennis match.  This morning, I turned on this computer to find Melissa right here, with me, undertaking a Stealth (which is to say surprise) In Anticipation of You Are My Only giveaway.  It's pretty big.  It's so Melissa.  It threw me for a Coney-Island-Roller-Coaster-quality loop.  Please take a moment to visit her blog and see what she has in store for you.

Melissa, you rock.  The next triple scoop is on me.  Plus the world's best malbec.

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Midnight in Paris

Late yesterday afternoon the suffocating heat broke, the skies blued, and I convinced my husband to join me in seeing Woody Allen's film, "Midnight in Paris," which came highly recommended by Melissa Sarno, whose fine blog, This Too... speaks for itself. 

My friends, Melissa was right.  Allen has done something quite extraordinary here—dared to send Owen Wilson (whose screen presence is, to me, a dear one) through the streets of Paris as a yearner and would-be novelist named Gil.  Gil, is about to marry a woman (Inez, played by Rachel McAdams) who rarely listens to and hardly respects Gil's desire to leave his lucrative Hollywood career for a chance at a different kind of writerly life.  Inez is entitled, egocentric, ungenerous.  Gil dreams.

Gil also begins to walk the streets of Paris at midnight, and that's when things begin to change, when the film moves toward both fantasy and the fantastic.  You won't find spoilers here, but I will tell you this:  One of the most moving aspects of this film, to me, was how freely Allen asserted his vision.  Gil's midnight interludes are not explained away as dreams or science fiction.  They are not narratively challenged.  They are merely presented—given to us in all their sweetness and humor, for our cinematic taking.

I loved this movie for its unabashed goodness and for what it says about the power of place, of cities, to embody not just now but then. I loved it for making me laugh out loud, for releasing me back into the dusky night feeling lighter than I've been.

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A photo (and link-rich) tour of my morning at the BEA

I left the house at 5 AM yesterday, and walked, in the breaking dark, toward the train. The carnival lights from the Devon Horse Show grounds were shining just for me.

I arrived early to the Javits Center and took a walk first within the silence, then among the onslaught of crowds. Soon I was at the Egmont USA booth, interviewing the wonderful Rob Guzman, part of the Egmont USA marketing team. (Later in the day I had the privilege of interviewing Egmont USA's Alison Weiss.)

In impromptu fashion (under Rob's raised eyebrow) I began signing books right there at the Egmont booth, flashing my spanking-new bookmarks whenever I could.  It wasn't long before I was in the presence of Florinda of the 3Rs, a beautiful book blogger and a member of the Armchair BEA team. We had a conversation, Florinda and I, and, thanks to Elizabeth Law, our dialogue was captured for all of time on film.  Check the Armchair BEA blog later today to see what Florinda and I had to say.

Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA was my guide throughout the morning; in the rush of my signing, Florinda took our photograph. Soon, were we joined by some beautiful people—librarians, teachers, readers, parents, and blogger friends. There I am with Kathy of BermudaOnion (I finally met her and she's as lovely as I knew she would be) and Julie of Booking Mama (isn't she gorgeous?). Later, I had the privilege of seeing (among so many others) the uber-smart editor/blogger behind Beth Fish Reads, the design whiz Alea of Pop Culture Junkie, and the incredibly gracious writer and blogger Melissa Sarno of This Too. I was signing at the very last table and beyond me were authors of huge celebrity and appeal. I cannot sufficiently express my appreciation for those who stood in my line and gave me the chance to meet them.

Just before I left the premises to walk across town to Grand Central to take a (strictly un-airconditioned) bus on a (bumper-to-bumper expressway) to JFK Airport to see my son just ahead of his departure for London, I had a few near encounters with famous people, including Olivia the Pig and Michael Moore, pictured above. I also finally got to meet my last editor at HarperCollins, Ruta Rimas, who helped usher The Heart Is Not a Size into the world. She's cuter and sweeter than I can say. I picked up a single galley at the show, from Grove: Alice LaPlante's Turn of Mind, which is enjoying a whole lot of early buzz.

I will miss my son enormously. But he is on an adventure all his own, and I could not be happier for him.

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