Firstborn/Lorie Ann Grover: celebration!

Yesterday I tried to remember my YA book life before Readergirlz entered in, and then I realized—well, I hardly had any YA book life before that happened. Maybe there was a book or two, a blog follower and a smidge, but it was when Readergirlz somehow found me or I, them (I cannot remember the sequence), that I began to live more fully in YA Wonderland.

Lorie Ann Grover, one of the founders of Readergirlz, was there from the start. We shared a love for young readers and a faith that they can be reached, a fascination with dance, and optimism about books—optimism through the thick and the thin, the high and the low of this publishing business. We believed in the intelligence of younger readers—in stretching with them, in learning from them.

I'm very happy, then, to share word today of Lorie Ann Grover's newest book, Firstborn, which was released just this week by Blink. Inspired by an article Lorie Ann read on "the practice of systematic annihilation of baby girls in countries throughout the world," it has been described by early elated reviewers as both a fantasy and a dystopian read. It has a Kirkus star—and people are talking.

I am deeply appreciative of writers who can take me into entirely new worlds, and this is precisely what Firstborn does from its very first page—opens the door to a world we haven't seen before. There are packs bulging with mutton and herbs, a communal rain urn, a priest with black robes and attached wings that hisses to a couple "Your firstborn female is worthless!" For here, in this world, firstborn females are worthless, and the only way for Tiadone, a firstborn girl, to survive is for her parents to raise her as a boy—and hope that she denies, neglects, or somehow otherwise masks her feminine ways.

Her parents choose, for her, this masked survival.

It's a hard life out there, as Tiadone grows up. Here is how Lorie Ann describes her world:

The square overflows with people. Fourteen years after the conquest we R'tan villagers still give a wide berth to the ruling Madronians. Clad in roughspun trousers, ponchos, and layered dresses, R'tan sidestep the Madronians in their ornate robe, and we continue to avert our eyes from their kohl-dotted ones.

But it's not just this grittiness that tears at Tiadone's soul. It's her growing sense, as her male initiation rites grow near, that she is suppressing more of her self that any young woman should suppress. That there is something beautiful, indeed, about being female. That having to pretend she is a boy is denying her all that she is coming to love. What are her choices? What are the risks of being exposed? This is the story Lorie Ann, in her loving way, lovingly tells.

We are all rejoicing for you, Lorie Ann. We—Readergirlz Proper and Readergirlz Extended—send our blessings on the powerful new book you are launching into the world.

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Two dear people read Going Over, and make this gray day bright and —

we are very happy. We are more than happy.

First, from my long-time friend Lorie Ann Grover, whose own forthcoming YA book, a fantasy novel called Firstborn, just received a Kirkus star. Lorie Ann and I bonded through our love for young people and young people books by way of Readergirlz, where I was the inaugural writer in residence (and we had so much fun, we really did). We have remained friends ever since. Lorie Ann came to my city for ALA Midwinter and somehow—somehow—I missed her. It was astonishing today to read her words about this Berlin novel. Astonishing, and danceworthy, and no excuses next time: We must meet!

And then there is amazing Pam of Bookalicious, whom I have also never met, though we believe that we once brushed shoulders at a BEA event and managed not to realize whose shoulders we'd just brushed. Pam has been such an incredible advocate for my work. Her words—so potent—sit, among other places, on the jacket of the Small Damages paperback. Pam was one of the very first people (outside the Chronicle team) to read Going Over. She shared her copy with a gentleman on an airplane and told me the story while I was sitting in a very cold hotel room in a far-away town, while on assignment. Here are her words about the book. They are, well, Pam-alicious. And there is a giveaway.

Thank you, Lorie Ann. Thank you, Pam. Very much.

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A New Poem, Flying Chickadee, and the Courageous Creativity Zine

A few months ago, Lorie Ann Grover, a dear friend, talented writer, and founding partner in Readergirlz, introduced me, via email, to Shirin Subhani, the co-creator of Flying Chickadee and the quite original and lovely zine, Courageous Creativity.  Shirin was wondering if I might write a poem on courage for her next issue, and I, thinking about my son's graduation and the uncertain nature of life ahead, said yes.

Within the last few days, this new issue of the magazine has launched, and it is, as I hope you'll see by going to this site, big in both heart and execution. Important stories are here, and so is hope.

Introducing, then, Courageous Creativity, and a poem about a certain boy, called "The Graduate." With thanks to Lorie Ann and Shirin. 

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The You Are My Only Treasure Hunt Continues

Readers of this blog know that a You Are My Only treasure hunt is under way.  The hunt goes something like this:  I've written five guest posts about the making of this book.  Those posts have now begun to pop up in the blogosphere.  Your job (should you choose to accept it) is to find those five entries and then post them collectively on your own blog.  Send the link to me, in a comment box on my blog, and your name will be entered into a drawing. 

Two winners will be selected. Each will win these two things: A signed copy of You Are My Only AND a critique (by yours truly) of the first 2,000 words of a work-in-progress. As many of you know, I teach memoir at the University of Pennsylvania and served as the inaugural readergirlz author in residence. I have written in multiple genres and critique adult fiction for major U.S. newspapers. Your manuscript can, I am hinting, be in any genre, save for a screenplay, about which I have absolutely zero expertise.

To make this contest a little easier, I am reprinting here the first paragraphs of the two entries that are now floating out there in the virtual world.

The first, titled "The (furious) metamorphosis of Sophie," is hosted on a blog that has the clever subtitle "Looking better in black since 1234."  It appeared on September 9th, and it begins like this:

Several years ago I began to write a novel for adults that had a certain Sophie as its focus.  She was in her late thirties and her boyfriend, Vin, had recently left her.  She was alone, a writer, and trying to piece together the unresolved oddments of her past.  Strange things were being left on Sophie’s doorstep—signs, masks, even a pot of soup—and the only thing that Sophie knew for sure that she was being lured to an abandoned asylum on the other side of the woods by people she wasn’t certain she could trust.

The second, titled "Opening the door to Cloris and Helen," appears today, September 21, and is hosted by a blogger whom we all consider to be our friend.  It begins like this:

I’ll be honest.  Cloris and Helen are two characters who have been living with me for more than a decade.  That’s right.  I carried these two dear souls, these more-than-best-friends ladies, through a variety of novels I’d been writing.  They were bird-obsessed in one book (not so strange, since all of my books have at least one character who is obsessed with birds).  They were digging a huge hole beneath their house in another.  In an early version of the book that became You Are My Only, it was Cloris who had been committed to the asylum.

  Two posts up and three to go.  I'll be keeping you apprised as the hunt continues.

Finally, today, I would like to thank the ever-dear Lorie Ann Grover for her beautiful words about You Are My Only.  I had the privilege of working with Lorie Ann and all the Readergirlz not long ago, as the author in residence.  Happy times.  Thank you, Lorie Ann.

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Rocking the Drop

I rocked the drop with The Heart is Not a Size and Undercover in support of Teen Lit Day today. 

Get out there, or get here, and check it out!

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Teen Lit Day: Rocking the Drop with Readergirlz

I'm about to go out and Rock the Drop for Readergirlz in support of Teen Lit Day.  What's that, you say?  You don't know about Teen Lit Day?  You don't know about Readergirlz and its mission to promote teen literarcy and corresponding social service?  You don't know about Figment?  Stop all traffic.  Take a moment here.  Get yourself involved.

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Philly Girl

Though I moved a lot when I was a kid, I always came home to my mother's Philadelphia—its suburbs on the fringe, the University of Pennsylvania campus (as a student), tiny apartments on Camac Street and Gaskill Street, back out to the fringe as a new mother, then in and out, these days, to visit clients or to teach at my alma mater (recently tied for fifth on the U.S. News and World Report university ranking, I was proud and pleased to read the other day). 

I consider myself, in other words, a Philly girl, and so when Jenny Girl took the time to put together this remarkable look back at Philadelphia's Centennial, I felt immediate kinship with her.  I may not like a lot about growing older.  But I do like knowing where home is (and who my neighbors are). 

Thank you, too, to Readergirlz this morning. Their friendship represents another home.

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The Abundance of John Green (in Looking for Alaska)

A few years ago, during fellowship hour at my church, a friend and her daughter began describing their most recent literary adventure.  They'd driven to New York, they said, to see John Green read.  The line to get in was at least a block long.  When the crowd finally fully compacted, when it contained its excitement and hushed, John Green wasn't just the funny, smart, wonderful, warm writer my friend and her daughter thought he would be.  He was infinitely better than that.

I believe it.  Like Libba Bray, John Green emanates a good Bigness, not just of talent, but of spirit.  Travels to his web site yield a glimpse of a guy whose humor, occasional gentle self-mockery, and unabashed love for World Cup Soccer have remained intact, through the tsunami of his success.  If you had a chance to visit readergirlz during their John Green month, you'd find the man waving with both hands, talking up playlists, and jiving his way through his infamous tweets (he hates the term social media, apparently, but he's textbook good at it). If you've read any of his books, or even just the acknowledgments in his books, or maybe the extras in his books, you get the aforementioned good Bigness.

This morning I've been reading the book that launched Green's career, Looking for Alaska, because it is a good thing, I think, to go back to the beginning with authors, to remember what was first for them, the platform that they built from.  Everything is right about this book—the tone, the relationships, the slow build of tension and mystery (slow, or fast, depending on how you take to the chapter "titles' which are all variations of "fifty-eight days before" or "one-day after").  Alaska has the intelligence of A Separate Peace and the wit of a Salinger.  It has something only this former hospital chaplain might have written about The Meaning of it All.

Green's work will, I'm certain, be around for a long time.  He is an author who makes me proud to be counted among the YA writers of right now.  Because Green's work is first-rate  no matter what genre label you give it, and that's what YA books must be, first and foremost—well-written, thoughtful, funny if the author can swing it, capable of leaving readers psychically richer than they were. 

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Tell Me a Secret/Holly Cupala: Reflections

Bad girls are never bad girls to begin with; maybe it's not fair to bullet them bad at all. They are girls who grow up taking risks and diverging, girls who don't trail down expected paths. They leave questions behind, and secrets, always.  They leave parents and sisters and boyfriends.

With her engrossing, fast-moving debut novel, Tell Me a Secret, Holly Cupala (a most cherished readergirlz) pulls back the curtains on the life a so-called "bad girl" named Xanda left behind—the vacancies that erupt, the questions that go unanswered, the growing up that has now been left to Xanda's younger sister, Rand.  Rand is an artist, she's smart, she's a good soul.  She's also pregnant and confused, suddenly running with the wrong crowd, not sure who she can trust, who she can turn to.  High school can savage a girl with self-doubt, and savages abound in this well-drawn cast of characters.  Rand finds allies in the most unexpected places. She learns, too, to trust herself.

Cupala has a terrific knack for capturing the bang and bruise of the high school in-crowd, not to mention the terrible power of gossip.  She keeps her story ratcheting forward but never at the expense of character development.  She delivers, with Tell Me a Secret, a high-octane tale.  It's going to have people talking all summer.

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In which I answer the question...

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

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Sunbursts

Ahem, the note begins, An official announcement:  Nothing But Ghosts was picked by the postergirlz to be a recommended read in the newest issue of readergirlz, to accompany this month's featured title, Absolutely Maybe, by Lisa Yee. 

Being chosen by the postergirlz is like coming home to a place that embraced me more than a year ago, challenged me to become the first readergirlz author in residence, and continues to bring enduring friendship into my life.  Thank you, then, to all of you, for this and more.

Elsewhere....  It is because Becca at Bookstack writes such incredibly intelligent and thorough reviews (and because her site is so gorgeous to look at) that I am so often there, learning from her.  Today I tuned in only to discover this moving review of The Heart is Not a Size.  Becca, thank you so much.

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Supernatural Fantasy

It was Maya Ganesan who asked me once (during a readergirlz chat) if I would ever consider writing fantasy—something within the supernatural vein.

I said, I don't know how.

It was hipwritermama who said, I bet you could.

I'd said that before—I don't know how. I'd said it about memoir, about young adult fiction, about poetry. I'd said it about corporate fable and novels for adults. I'd said it about being a mother. I But questions open doors. Would you ever consider...?

Lately, I have.

Inspired by a recent conversation I had with a certain someone from the world of film, inspired by Maya and bolstered by hipwritermama, I have just sent the first 77 pages of a supernatural mystery to my agent.

I think I'm onto something. I am hoping. It can be very difficult, as a writer, to keep your hopes alive. But I'm alive right now. Very much so.

Time, this rainy Sunday, to return my thoughts to corporate work.

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Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business

I sometimes talk about Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business, the corporate fable I co-authored with Matt Emmens, who is now the CEO of Vertex and chairman of the board of Shire. I explain the book to those who ask as an Alice in Wonderland-esque fable about the power of the imagination in corporate America. The story features a character named Moira, who wears read shoes and fine, striped socks as she winds her way through a sclerotic bureaucracy in search of a way to make a difference. In the process, she inspires those she meets—a character named Hedger, for example, characters named Nod and Bolt and Snort—to help revitalize a corporate giant called Zenobia.

Published by Berrett-Koehler in 2008, the book has gone to live and breathe in many countries, sometimes adapting the original illustrations (which were created by my husband) and sometimes unveiling entirely new graphic universes. I thought of this book last week, during the readergirlz chat, when Hipwritermama and Maya Ganesan and others asked if I'd ever consider writing fantasy.

Zenobia is the closest I've yet come.

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readergirlz live chat tonight

In my last official act as the inaugural readergirlz author in residence, I'm participating in a live chat tonight, 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern. Join us at readergirlz.blogspot.com. And then continue the journey with this extraordinary organization as Elizabeth Scott, author of Something, Maybe, The Unwritten Rule, and Love You Hate You Miss You, takes over as author in residence.

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A readergirlz Winner

I felt a bit like an elf today, slipping through the halls of a local high school and delivering a copy of Nothing but Ghosts to Kiera Ingalls, the talented young writer who won the third readergirlz writing contest. I meant to stay for a short while, but my hosts—Katherine Barham and her class of aspiring writers—were dear and gracious, giving me room to talk about the extraordinary enterprise that is readergirlz and asking intelligent questions about the writer's life. Where do stories begin? How do titles erupt? Can books really build an audience through word of mouth? Why do so many embrace and celebrate books that don't appear to be immensely well written? These students had just, at Ms. Barham's prompting, written their own books and designed their own covers; they'd rounded up blurbs and crafted their bios. What, they seemed to be asking, is the future of books?

The future is you, I thought. And you. And you. It's Kiera, pictured here with the fabulous Ms. Barham, and with me, who felt so proud to meet her.

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Hold me Tight by Lorie Ann Grover/Beth Kephart Review

There is never enough time for me to be the person I want to be. I am shamed, often, by all I cannot find the hours to do. But this week, at last, I turned to books written by friends—to packages sent, to packages ordered. I turned to the poems of the extraordinarily talented Kate Northrop (Things Are Disappearing Here). To the short stories of Alyson Hagy (Ghosts of Wyoming). To Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's novel-in-progress. And, last night and this morning, to Lorie Ann Grover's young adult novel-in-poems, Hold me Tight.

Lorie Ann is a readergirlz founder, a homeschooling mother, a former dancer. She is also, let me be clear, a bonafide poet who, with Hold me Tight, captures the bewildering eight weeks in the life of a young girl whose father has left, whose mother is pregnant, and whose classmate has been snatched by a vengeful kidnapper. It doesn't make sense, and yet this is life as Estele Leann knows it, life as she must learn to live it.

A novel-in-poems might sound like a daunting proposition; Hold me Tight is anything but. I can't, in fact, imagine telling this story in any other fashion, with any other tools. More words would have been excess and somehow less true. Fewer would have denied us the long dwell in the cracked-open heart of a child. In line after line, Lorie Ann masterfully reveals a child grappling to understand, and to forgive.

I'm going to shatter
into a million slivers,
and none of my pieces
will end up
touching each other.

She reveals as well a child who is already finding her way:

I gather a few bits
and tape myself
back into Dad's arms.
This is what I have
to show he loved me once.
This was me
before I hated him.
This was then.

Sometimes the people who put others on the stage (as Lorie Ann has put so many on the stage) aren't given enough room beneath the spotlight. Today, on my blog, it's Lorie Ann Grover's turn to leap and to touch down, graced.

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readergirlz writing contest (2): the story song

Only cold. Only wet. A lonesome feeling.

For a reminder about the second readergirlz writing contest—soliciting short poems or prose pieces that have been thoughtfully choreographed—please see my post on today's HarperTeen blog.

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Taking Refuge with Librarians

Yesterday I went out in the cold, hard rain and drove to the Barnes and Noble down the road, where the perpetually bright-eyed Maureen had asked me to spend a few minutes speaking with local school librarians and teachers about young adult books. I had pictured the weather keeping most of these good people home (I'd have understood, honest), but when I got to the store I discovered not only my dear friend Joel (the elementary school librarian who had given my son such a wonderful start and has a starring role in my fourth book), but deeply-invested-in-young-people sorts from my own former middle and high school, my son's former high school, local Catholic schools, schools where I've conducted writing workshops, and elsewhere.

It was, in a word, heartening—spending this time in the company of those who care so much about the kids who wander into classrooms and libraries looking for light. Our few minutes stretched into nearly two hours. We spoke of boys and girls, and how their reading patterns differ. We talked about the role of research in personal work. We told stories about how blogs connect young readers with authors, and why that makes a difference. We considered the influential role of readergirlz. In Nothing but Ghosts, my third YA novel, I chose to celebrate, among other things, the power of librarians in the lives of the young and searching. Yesterday reminded me how precisely right that decision was.

I came home to two notes from my friend, Denise, who faces her second chemo treatment today. She'd read Brooklyn, and loved it, as I had hoped she would; she had the most interesting things to say. In addition, the pair of earrings that I'd bought for her had just arrived. Her email contained a photo of her wearing the promised colorful head scarf and the gold pyramidal flare. "Thanks to you," the note read, "I am officially a Way Cool Woman, and I have the photo to prove it."

Yesterday, on this blog, I was writing of beauty. Denise is shoulders back and spine tall and unimpeachable radiance. She has always been, and is even more so now, a most immaculate beauty.

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readergirlz writing contest (2): the story song

For the second readergirlz contest, I've chosen a topic close to my heart—choreography—and called it The Story Song. Please find the details below:

I read books to meet new characters, to go new places, and to find out what happens. I also read to learn how the author has chosen to choreograph the narrative. Is it a straight-forward telling, or a book that turns round on itself? Does the story speed up and slow down, are there embedded refrains, which themes recur, which details, and why? Watch this video, then share with me one of your own poems or short (up to ten lines) pieces of writing. Tell me, with your submission, just how you thought about the piece as lyric. What, in other words, was your choreographic strategy?

Send your entry to me at kephartblogATcomcastDOTnet by October 25, 2009. The author of the winning paragraph will receive a signed copy of House of Dance, a novel about a young girl who, in taking care of her dying grandfather and learning about the life he once lived, decides to offer him one final gift. The winning work will also be posted on my blog.

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Remain Vulnerable: The inaugural readergirlz vlog and writing contest

A few days ago, I wrote of my new role with readergirlz, as author in residence. Today readergirlz is rolling out my first writing vlog, which is titled Remain Vulnerable. Visit the readergirlz blog and watch the video. Then participate, if you choose, in the writing contest we outline there. The winner will receive a signed copy of Undercover.

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