an honor, an excerpt, my husband's clay

I struggle, perhaps I always will, with striking the right balance. How much do we talk about ourselves out here? How much do we turn our attention to others? What does a small personal moment mean against the backdrop of grave concerns or else-where suffering?

I don't have the answers.

But here, today, is this:

This Is the Story of You, my young adult novel about the consequences of a monster storm, was named to the 2017 TAYSHAS Reading List today, and I could not be more grateful on behalf of this quiet book that means to much to me. Thank you, TAYSHAS, and thank you, Taylor Norman of Chronicle Books, who is so consistently kind to me. The link to the full list is here.

An excerpt from Nest. Flight. Sky., a Shebooks memoir about the loss of my mother, appears on the beautiful literary site, The Woven Tale Press, today. Woven Tale is like a book you want to read—beautiful considered and laid out. That link is here.

Finally, my husband's work will be featured in a major exhibition that opens tomorrow. This international show, Craft Forms, has its home at the Wayne Art Center, and tomorrow night I'll abandon my ordinary, often wrinkled, not exactly glamorous garb for a dress and heels to help celebrate the opening night. The link to my husband's work is here.

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Helen Macdonald's Magnificent H Is for Hawk, in New York Journal of Books

I became obsessed with birds with the passing of my mother. The way they came to me. The way they called to me. The hollow of their bones. The other women, throughout time, who have buried their hearts in wings and feathers. This was the subject of my sixth memoir, Nest. Flight. Sky.: On Love and Loss, One Wing at a Time. This is the subject, again, of One Thing Stolen, the obsession that lies at the heart of that book.

And so when I began to read of Helen Macdonald's new memoir, H Is for Hawk, already a bestseller in England, I became desperate for the time to read that book myself. Over the past two days I have done just that, then sorted through my thoughts to write a review for the New York Journal of Books, where I'll now be penning my thoughts on literary adult fiction, memoir, and literary young adult novels.

The other day one of my students asked me to name my favorite memoir—an impossible question, of course. But now, whenever I'm asked that question, I'll be whispering Helen Macdonald's name. This is a book. Oh. This is a book.

The full review can be found here.

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Nest. Flight. Sky.: on the physical page in the Shebooks anthology

Deeply grateful to Laura Fraser and Peggy Northrop and the entire Shebooks team for including Nest. Flight. Sky.: on love and loss, one wing at a time in a first print anthology that also features the work of Mary Jo McConahay (on war reporting in Central America), Faith Adiele (on women's health), Barbara Graham (on abuse), Ethel Rohan (on survival and forgiveness), and Susan Ito (on the search for a birth mother).

The book is here, with me, and and now available for order. I am especially grateful to Beth Hoffman, the incredibly talented and generous author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me, for lending her voice to the back cover.

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Free today: Nest. Flight. Sky., my Shebooks memoir (or any Shebook, for that matter)

Today and tomorrow, my friends, you can download one Shebook for free.

Go to the site. 

Use FREEBOOK as the promo code.

Find a shady spot.

Read.

I'd be so honored if you chose my memoir, Nest. Flight. Sky. But any Shebooks book will do

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The Shebooks Kickstarter Campaign: watch the movie

You know how proud I am to be a Shebooks author. You know how much I've loved the Shebooks I've read. You know how much it means to be able to support other writers of fiction, memoir, long-form journalism. To support other women, too.

And so here I am with Shebooks again, but this time I'm talking about the Kickstarter campaign. I'm going to let the official press release speak for Shebooks here. But I hope you'll stop to watch the movie. To be inspired by it, even, to help the campaign, to write a Shebooks of your own.

Shebooks Launches Kickstarter for its 2014 Equal Writes Campaign

New digital publisher kicks off campaign to raise awareness of gender bias in publishing.


San Francisco, CA (May 27, 2014) – Shebooks, a new digital publisher of short e-books by women,
today launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise awareness of the gender bias in publishing—and to
build a fund to pay women writers. “Our goal is to publish as many short e-books by women as we
can this year.” says Laura Fraser, Shebooks Cofounder and Editorial Director. “As an author, I’ve seen the space for quality women's writing shrink and shrink. That’s why we started Shebooks, to give more women a platform to publish their work.”

The 30-day Kickstarter campaign has a goal to raise $50K, all of which will go to pay women writers in 2014. At every pledge level, Shebooks offers fun, creative campaign rewards, including a Shebooks subscription, a chance to get your own original work published in an upcoming Girl Power anthology, an “EQUAL WRITES” T-shirt, a night out with Shebooks authors, author visits to your book club, the opportunity to have a protagonist named after you in an upcoming book, and much more.

To date, Shebooks has published over 40 original books by top authors and journalists. Shebooks
authors include international bestselling author Hope Edelman, New York Times-bestselling author
Caroline Leavitt, former Deputy Editor of Essence Teresa Wiltz, founder of Ms. Magazine Suzanne
Braun Levine, and National Book Award finalist Beth Kephart. This week’s Shebook, I’ll Give You
Something to Cry About, is an original novella by New York Times-bestselling novelist Jennifer Finney Boylan, who was recently named the Anna Quindlen writer-in-residence at Barnard.

“We are thrilled by the quality of the e-books that we’ve published so far and are excited to discover
new voices and publish many more,” says Peggy Northrop, Cofounder and President of Shebooks.
“Kickstarter is the perfect vehicle for getting the word out to a wide audience about this exciting new media form.”

About Shebooks
Shebooks is a new publisher of short e-books by and for women, cofounded in 2013 by magazine
editor Peggy Northrop, bestselling author Laura Fraser, and media executive Rachel Greenfield.
Shebooks.net offers a curated collection of original and hard-to-find memoir, fiction, and journalis tailored to women and designed to be read in under two hours. Shebooks can be purchased individually for $2.99 or by subscription.

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Nest. Flight. Sky.: an excerpt (and a Netgalley)

This morning, an excerpt from Nest. Flight. Sky., my memoir newly out from Shebooks. Shebooks feature women writers of both fiction and nonfiction. I chose to write about birds and loss and words. To explore the aftermath of mourning, and the women, over time, who have hunted down wings.

Shebooks are available for $2.99, as e-books. Mine can be purchased here. Interested reviewers can contact me for a link to Netgalley.

What is it we are waiting for, when we sit and wait for birds? What do we believe they will fly this way to tell us? Why do we need them—these creatures that sleep with one eye open and sleep, sometimes, even in flight? These evolved dinosaurs with their air-sac bones and their toothless bills and their magnetic sensibilities and their panoply of feathers—tail feathers, flight feathers, semiplumes, filoplumes, bristles, down? These songsters, these architects, these visionaries, these clowns?

Some 150 million years ago, birds found a way to fly. One bird—the bar-tailed godwit—flies from Alaska to New England without stopping—eight days of flight. One bird—the albatross—the globe. Some birds—warblers, flycatchers, hummingbirds—travel at night. In the ache of loss, in the ache of yearning, in the suspense of waiting, what is the science of whoosh?

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writing about home, on the Psychology Today blog "One True Thing"

I have waited a very long time to share this photograph. The post had to be special. It had to mean something big.

Today feels like big. This piece, that I am sharing, feels like something. It is called "Our House Is Still His Home." It appears on the Psychology Today blog, One True Thing, created by fellow Shebooks author, Jennifer Haupt. I'm so grateful to Jennifer for this chance to speak on her lovely blog and for sharing my enthusiasm for spreading word about Shebooks.

My own Shebooks was launched yesterday. Here's more on that.

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Nest. Flight. Sky., my first memoir in years, now available through Shebooks

When the invitation came to write a mini-memoir for Shebooks, I was in the midst of many things but stopped. This, I thought, is what I want to write most right now. This story—about loving and losing my mother, about a slow-growing, ever-deepening obsession with birds and wings—is where my heart is. And so I wrote Nest. Fight. Sky.: On Love and loss, one wing at a time for a new publishing company, and model, that I have, in the intervening months, grown to respect hugely. I have now read many Shebooks. I have written of some of them here. I am very proud, today, to join this family of writers—feel honored to stand among them.

This mini-memoir, available through Kindle and Nook, is just $2.99. (It will also soon be posted on the Shebooks site, but I'm just so excited that I am sharing this now.) Funny to announce the price of a book in a blog post, I know, but I slip that fact in here because I hope it will help persuade you to download not just Nest., but some of the other remarkable offerings made available through Shebooks.

If you have the time and inclination, it would be so wonderful for you to help spread word.

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Nest. Flight. Sky. The cover reveal of my forthcoming Shebooks memoir

In Nest. Flight. Sky: On Love and Loss, One Wing at a Time award-winning memoirist Beth Kephart returns to the form for the first time in years to reckon with the loss of her mother and a slow-growing but soon inescapable obsession with birds and flight. Kephart finds herself drawn to the startle of the winter finch and the quick pulse of hummingbirds and the hungry circling of hawks. She discovers birds in the stories she tells and the novels she writes. She hunts for nests, she waits for song, she learns the stories of bird artists, she waits, again. Nest. Flight. Sky. is about the love that endures and the hope that saves us. It’s about the gift of feathers. Coming shortly, from Shebooks.  

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