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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too much of too much: the end of an era

We returned from a day in New Hope with friends to discover that the trumpetvine my father had planted for me years ago, after my mother passed away, had finally twisted away from the house and fallen still. This was my hummingbird bush, the cover I took on summer days. This was the heart of my memoir, Nest. Flight. Sky. This was where the world could not find me. The world couldn't. The birds did.

The bush wrenched away from itself, urged by either wind or squirrel.

It was depleted, and I understand, for I am depleted, too. Too much of too much and so much more to go, and this must be how my trumpetvine felt—it had survived enough storms. It can give cover no more.

But how I will miss my hummingbirds.

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Honored to be included in Whatever Doesn't Kill You: The Shebooks Print Anthology

I am deeply honored to have my memoir, Nest. Flight. Sky., selected as one of six memoirs for the first Shebooks print anthology. I stand in glorious good company. I am grateful to Laura Fraser, Peggy Northrop, and the entire Shebooks family, and I cannot wait to hold this book in my hands.

COMING SOON | AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW

Shebooks, a new media company devoted to women’s storytelling, presents its best short memoirs in this print anthology, Whatever Doesn’t Kill You: Six Memoirs of Resilience, Strength, and Forgiveness.

In “Ricochet: Two women war reporters and a friendship under fire,” award-winning journalist Mary Jo McConahay explores the personal toll of war reporting in Central America.

Playwright and author Barbara Graham’s delicate “Camp Paradox: A memoir of stolen innocence” takes on the taboo topic of women abusing younger girls.

Susan Ito’s “The Mouse Room” is the quirky tale of a young woman working in a genetics lab while trying to find her own birth mother.

Faith Adiele’s “ The Nordic-Nigerian Girls’ Guide to Lady Problems” makes a trip to the gynecologist’s office funny, while exposing racial disparities in women’s health care.

Award-winning short story writer Ethel Rohan’s “Out of Dublin” is an exquisite tale of emotional survival.

In the gorgeous “Nest. Flight. Sky.” memoirist Beth Kephart muses on her mother’s death and her new-found obsession with birds.

All these true life stories are brave and beautifully written. The authors use the power of writing to understand and transcend challenges– their memoirs  are an inspiration for all of us.

Edited by Laura Fraser. 

“Shebooks are essential for a well-read life”-- Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

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Nesting: an early poem from years ago

Late last night, a beloved former neighbor, digging around in her attic, finds a poem I'd written for her daughter years ago and take the time to type it for me.


"Nesting," I'd called it. This long-time obsession with birds.

Nesting
(For Hae Linn)

In high summer
A Christmas cactus
Awkwardly hung
And nested
With finch.

I believe you were seven
When they
Broke into life,
And blind-eyed,
Panicked for the light.

At dusk,
When the air cooled,
We would pull their roosting down
To find the fur and murmurs
Redefined.

Though still too young,
They yearned to fly
And in the last
They, in a tremble,
Bent wings between the sky.

We spent the night
In search of
Cactus-sown finch:
You certain they would survive;
I, silently, not...

Though, perhaps, in another form,
They did,
If once more redefined
And mindless
Or the fragments left behind. 

Today is the last day that Nest. Flight. Sky.: On Love and Loss One Wing at a Time, my Shebooks memoir, can be downloaded for free, the details here.

(It goes without saying that that is no finch in the photo, but a miniature owl I encountered in southeast Alaska.)

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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 Interview, and It's Official, It's On, It's a Whole World Out There

You know that Shebooks publishing venture I've been speaking of? That ever-growing cache of stories and memoirs—written by women to be read in one sitting? That brain child of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser that has been releasing truly fantastic e-books for a mere $2.99 each, week by week, by writers like Hope Edelman, Jane Ciabattari, Ariel Gore, and Suzanne Braun Levine?

Yes, that one.

Well, a fully enhanced Shebooks site is now live. It features author interviews, videos, extras. It offers a subscription service (currently discounted), that allows readers to buy the books they want at a low monthly price.

(Shebooks is also launching a Kickstarter "Equal Writes" campaign this coming Tuesday.)

My own Shebook, Nest. Flight. Sky. On love and loss, one wing at a time, is the first memoir I have written in many years and many books. It matters to me. Launched early this year, it now sits on the enhanced Shebooks site with extras such as an excerpt, a reading guide, and an interview which begins like this, below:

What prompted you to write Nest. Flight. Sky.?

I teach memoir at Penn, I’ve written about its glories, challenges, and consequences in Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, I blog daily about life (Beth Kephart Books), and once, a lifetime ago, I wrote five memoirs. But it has been many years and many books since I’d dared to write the extended truth. By the time Shebooks emerged, I was desperate to speak. My mother had passed away. I had become obsessed with birds and nests, but I did not understand why. I believe that it’s only in writing toward questions that we find at least some of the answers. I wrote Nest. Flight. Sky. to find some answers.

Birds and nests have been a recurrent theme in your work. What is the origin of this?

Nest. Flight. Sky: On love and loss, one wing at a time is, indeed, about recurrent images. It’s about those birds, those wings, those nests that have entered into all the fiction I have written—one book after another, ever since my mother died. It all began with winter finches tapping on my windowpane in the months after her passing. It became a quest for hawks, for hummingbirds, for flight.

When did you first decide you were a writer? 

Do we ever decide that we are writers? Or do we just decide that we must write, that we will not be able to breathe if we do not? I’m not sure, even all these books in, that I am a writer. I think readers are in charge of that decision. I only know that, since I was nine, words and their melodies gave me a sense of being nearly whole.

To read the whole thing, go here.

And local readers, please join me and other writers today at Main Point Books to help celebrate the first year in the life of an Indie. I'll be signing Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. For more on that, go here.

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Handling the Truth Wins Books for a Better Life/Motivational Category Award—and I meet Meredith Vieira and Lee Woodruff

The thing is: I had already won.

I had been invited to the 18th Annual Books for a Better Life Awards Program, sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society New York City—Southern New York Chapter. I was seeing friends—Darcy Jacobs, nominee Patty Chang Anker, Katie Freeman, Julia Johnson, my Gotham editor, Lauren Marino. My husband had joined me for the evening, our sensational son had left work to see us an hour before, Jenny Powers, VP of Special Events for the Society, had put on an amazing show of truly exceptional everythings at The TimesCenter. I had a new pink dress, those famous new shoes, and Maggie Scarf, the bestselling author, was telling my husband and me a story that held us both in captive disbelief. Soon I would go down that long flight of stairs and find the fabulous Lee Woodruff in the bathroom. We would speak of pink dresses, pink scarves, the sometimes good luck of fashion.

Earlier in the day, the phenomenal team at Chronicle Books had posted the stunning new trailer for Going Over, my soon-to-be-launched Berlin novel. School Library Journal had named Going Over the Pick of the Day. Laura Fraser of Shebooks had sent sweet news. The weather was kind. Only most of my hair was a mess.

And so I settled back into my chair at The TimesCenter simply to watch the show. To be grateful for it all. To be unencumbered, for that moment, by doubt. The first category of ten to be announced was the Motivational category. Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, a book about the students I love and the things they have taught me, sat (remarkably) alongside The Novel Cure (Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin), Saturday Night Widows (Becky Aikman), Survival Lessons (Alice Hoffman), and On These Courts (Wayne B. Drash). Meredith Vieira—gorgeous Meredith Vieira—was looking stunning up there on the stage, post Sochi, post Oscars. She was reading off the nominees, then opening an envelope, and then—and then—she called my name.

I have never been so unprepared for anything in my life. I had not, for a single second, rehearsed the possibility of the moment; winning was out of the question. I had a wide stage to cross, and by the time I reached the microphone and Meredith's outstretched arms, I had been rendered incapable of speech. I have absolutely no idea what words I finally said. I know only that I told Meredith how beautiful she really is (inside and out). I know that I struggled to find words for the beauty of my students. I know I said "son" and "husband" and "Gotham" and "dreams."

(How grateful am I to Lauren Marino, Lisa Johnson, Beth Parker, and the entire Gotham team for saying yes to this book in a seaside nano-second. And a million thanks to my agent, Amy Rennert, who has supported this book from the second it arrived in her to-be-read bin.)

Afterward, when all the winners gathered on stage for a Publishers Weekly photograph, I had an opportunity to speak with Meredith, to learn more about her upcoming new program, The Meredith Vieira Show. It is going to be wonderful because she is through-and-through wonderful. A real show, real conversations, a set that recreates her own family room, her own interests, pursued. Look for it come Labor Day.

I end this as I must end this—with prayers for those who are living with and seeking to combat multiple sclerosis, a haunting condition about which important words were spoken last night. Without organizations like the New York City—Southern New York Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society—organizations that work throughout the year to raise awareness and research dollars, bring together authors and publishers, put leading lights like Meredith Vieira, Lee Woodruff, Arianna Huffington, Pamela Paul, Mark Bittman, and Richard Pine on one stage, and gather friends—hope would not loom so large.  

I have never been so proud to bring an honor home.

I head to South Carolina in a few hours to serve as the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Distinguished Writer at Converse College. This is the week of a lifetime.

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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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"Cheap Words"—George Packer's New Yorker-sized look at Amazon and the questions it raises for writers

Yesterday, I left the house in the dark and took a nearly-faltered train to Thirtieth Street Station. In truth, the SEPTA train did falter—hitting a tree limb and freezing on the tracks until the brave conductor yanked the tangled arbor from beneath the belly of the car and moved us on.

From there I hopped a train to New York City—entering the Amtrak car through an icy igloo (so much snow inside the train, so truly surreal). I watched the piles of white through the train window. So cold. So high. So slumbering. At Penn Station I disembarked. The cab line was far too long. The streets were clogged. Ill-advised, I know, but still—I started walking toward Wall Street, where my client was awaiting a presentation. There were barricades of snow at most street corners, wide pools of slush above grates, entire sidewalks coated with two or three inches of glassy ice, some streets cordoned off with police tape, thanks to falling icicles. I zigged in and out, over and through, until I was lost, or almost lost. I arrived to my client's building lobby two hours later out of breath—my feet drenched, my black pants mucked, my hair knotted by the wind.

A push of an elevator button, and I ascended. A walk down the hall to the conference room, and I stood at this window, above the Big Apple, and waited for my meeting to begin. I know this company now. I know its leadership team. They have nicknamed me "incorrigible" over the past few weeks. They say it with a smile.

I belong there. I am valued.

I was thinking about my yesterday as I today read "Cheap Words: Amazon is good for customers. But is it good for books?"—the George Packer expose in the February 17/24 The New Yorker. Yes, of course, we've all read the Amazon story. Yes, we have, in one way or the other, participated in its rise or debated its morality. Still, Packer does an extraordinary job of painting the picture of an organization that squeezed its way into our lives, self-perpetuated in mega fashion through acts both feisty-bold and disturbingly secretive, and rapped an entire industry across the knuckles. Amazon has forced readers and writers to choose. It has brought a degree of shame to book buying and publishing that did not exist before. It has ushered in a new era of businesses that are hard to understand, let alone explain.

It seems to me that—if we care about our country, our children, our relationships, our legacy, our intellectual life, our weather-worried planet—we should be able to agree on a few good things. That intelligent and book-smart editors should be able to keep their jobs. That authors who write magnificently but perhaps not for the masses should be able to keep on writing. That readers who want to choose what they read can choose what they read—and read it affordably. Amazon makes many things that were not possible before possible—the longevity of back lists, the existence of Kindle Single operations like Shebooks, the emergence of authors whom "traditional" publishing has overlooked. But it has also helped create, or intensify, a scenario that, well, let Packer explain:

Several editors, agents, and authors told me that the money for serious fiction and nonfiction has eroded dramatically in recent years; advances on mid-list titles—books that are expected to sell modestly but whose quality gives them a strong chance of enduring—have declined by a quarter. These are the kinds of books that particularly benefit from the attention of editors and marketers, and that attract gifted people to publishing, despite the pitiful salaries. Without sufficient advances, many writers will not be able to undertake long, difficult, risky projects. Those who do so anyway will have to expand a lot of effort mastering the art of blowing their own horn.....

.... The quest for publishing profits in an economy of scarcity drives the money toward a few big books. So does the gradual disappearance of book reviewers and knowledgeable booksellers, whose enthusiasm might have rescued a book from drowning in obscurity. When consumers are overwhelmed with choices, some experts argue, they all tend to buy the same well-known thing.

Seventeen books into my career, I am the opposite of a well-known thing. I am a writer whose writing must be fit into the odd creases of night and early day, a writer who cannot tour because her "real work" beckons, a writer who cares deeply about stories and about language and about heart—a writer who—and you know how grateful I am—has been given opportunities again and again by different publishing houses in different genres—despite the fact that many people see Beth Kephart as that writer who has been generously reviewed but will not sell. I have been lucky. I have been ridiculously lucky, given my record in sales, to keep on sharing my tales.

But can it continue? Has the time come, after all, to face the facts? Can I honestly expect any publishing house—no matter how generous, no matter how kind—to keep on believing in me in an Amazon and mega-merger world? I read Packer and I wonder how much harder the climb will become, how much more stamina will be required, how much sheer luck will be necessary—not just for me but for so many of my insanely talented writers friends who, like me, keep bumping up against the mid-list wall. I wonder which authors will finally give up or give in, which stories will not get told, which brilliant editors will find some other thing to do, which proud indie might be forced into a lull. I wonder who will rise and who will fall, who will be paraded and who neglected. I wonder about the machinations of it all.

Incorrigible. They call me that in corporate America. Incorrigible. They say it, and we laugh. But I'm going to need a whole lot more incorrigible if I'm to keep writing in the years ahead. I'm going to need it, and so, perhaps, will you.

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While I was gone: a misbegotten fireplace fire, and kindness

Winter hit hard in these parts—as snow became rain became ice, trees keeled and broke, and hundreds of thousands lost power. The world was dark, dystopian, empty-seeming. We lasted for two days here, until a carefully tended fire in our own fireplace smoked out the house, thanks to an invisible, inoperative damper. Staying close to the burnt hearth was not an option.

And so we slipped away. I read three incredible books over those two days and am eager to share my thoughts with you here. (And will soon.) For now, I want to thank a few people who buoyed me through the storm.

First, Beth Hoffman (of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me), for so generously sharing her thoughts about my memoir Nest. Flight. Sky. with her legions of fans. This unforeseen generosity was such a huge surprise and so very welcome in the life of this mini-memoir. It was a gift.

Also, all thanks to Serena Agusto-Cox, who reviewed Nest. Flight. Sky. so kindly. Serena bought this $2.99 Shebook at once, read at once, and stopped to share her thoughts. That makes a huge difference, and I'm so appreciative. (I'm also so appreciative to Susan Tekulve, who was the very first to read and to write to me of this.)

Deep thanks as well to Ed Goldberg, who received an early copy of Going Over and wrote so beautifully about it in a review that touches on my work over time—all those themes that have held me in their grip. Ed, your shared faith in the intelligence of readers and their willingness to go deep means so much to me. You posted your review at just the right time.

Finally, Jessica Keener and Jamie Krug, big thanks to you—for sharing word of Handling the Truth with those you feel might learn something about confession and language, search and story in those pages. Books like mine survive through word of mouth. You keep giving Handling wings.

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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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Owl in Darkness: Zoe Rosenfeld (Shebooks)

Yesterday I shared the list of books that I'll be reading soon, while waiting, say, for a delayed dishwasher and kitchen countertops to appear (only nine days more, I'm told, or perhaps I did not hear correctly, so famished, thirsty, and wait-weary am I) or while riding the train to the city as my creative nonfiction class gets underway at Penn.

This morning, I'd like to tell you about the first book I read from that list, Zoe Rosenfeld's immaculate Owl in Darkness. I did not have the time, last evening, to begin something long and new. And so I turned to this 7,500-word Shebook and fell, at once, in love. Rosenfeld is recreating a writer's retreat—to a manor house, a foreign landscape, a town where she feels she is watched. She cannot write, this writer. She is not sure that living, alone, counts for writerly material. She is afraid of something, haunted by...what? A rabbit, an owl, a giant salamander, an old Edsel in the woods, a minor library, a horse with a wrong name—all these take on mythic proportions.

Writer friends, you will recognize yourself here. Reading friends, you will believe the stillness, the fear. Anyone at all will be elevated by the language. Here is a little of what I found and loved:

In the morning, she watches fog rise out of the trees like pale hair pulled from a brush. The sky is sea-mammal gray overhead, and it hangs low over the forest; the trees look very black, the lichens on their trunks standing out brilliant white and ghostly.

You want more? How about this?

At the clearing's edge, there's a strange, sloped shape, and she picks her way toward it through the brush till she can see what it is: an ancient Edsel, doorless, rotting in the woods. As she gets closer, she sees that its interior is almost all gone, the seats reduced to metal coils, the gauges cracked, the floor deep in dead leaves. The car's surface, once blue, is now the bleached, matte color of the sky.

Poetry in every line. Real poetry. And a story that can be read at once, experienced in a single sitting.

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what I'm reading now, or will be reading next, and where you can find me, shortly

Blog readers, I have failed you. I have been absent. I have been mired. Same ole same ole. Life as Beth Kephart.

Two things, today.

First: The names of the books that I now own and am eager to read and to share:

From the house of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the desk of the magnificent Lauren Wein:

The Patron Saint of Ugly, Marie Manilla
For Today I am a Boy, Kim Fu
The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia, David Stuart MacLean

From a recent trip to a local bookstore:

River of Dust, Virginia Pye
A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki
The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner
The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kid
Elsewhere: A Memoir, Richard Russo

From the debuting memoirists, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale:

Graduates in Wonderland: True Dispatches from Down the Rabbit Hole

On my iPad

Owl in Darkness, Zoe Rosenfeld (Shebooks!)
Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walters
The Apartment, Greg Baxter (because I could find it in no bookstore!)

Second, I will be at Mid-Winter ALA, which is being held in my very own city this January 24 - January 28 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, and I'm hoping to see you there. I'll be at the Chronicle Books cocktail party Friday evening, and I'll be signing You Are My Only for Egmont (paperback) Sunday at 3 PM. Please stop by.

I can also be found at the following two events, both at local churches:

February 16, 2014, 11 AM
On the Making of Memoir, a lecture
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church,
Bryn Mawr, pA

March 2, 2014, 1:30 - 4:00
Art of Literature/Art of Faith
Handling the Truth Workshop/Memoir Building
Historic Philadelphia in Novels (Dr. Radway and Dangerous Neighbors)
St. David's Church
Devon, PA

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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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Celebrating the Launch of Shebooks

Looking for something bright in this new year? A new literary idea that really works?

I have one word for you: Shebooks.

Readers of this blog might remember my post about a certain Shebooks writing contest a few months back.

Today I'm talking about the suite of Shebooks singles already available for downloading. These exquisite "mini" books of some 7,500 words each fit in your hands, can be read in a sitting, and can be downloaded for a mere $2.99 each. That's one thing. The other thing? They're written by writers you already know and love. Marion Winik. Laura Fraser. Hope Edelman. Micah Perkins. Ann Pearlman. Jessica Anya Blau. Faith Adiele. Suzanne Antonetta Paola. Zoe Rosenfeld. And many more to come.

I find the entire concept—the brainchild of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser—exhilarating. I've found the Shebooks themselves to be knock out reads—quieting, intriguing, considered, intimate, and intimately addressed to the reader (Want to eat the food of Italy without actually getting on a plane? Read Laura. Want a companion as you consider the lost and found of memory? Marion is your guide. Want to be carried backward in time, to a black and white engagement? Read Ann. Etc.). I feel incredibly lucky to be included in this community, with my own mini-memoir—Nests. Flight. Sky.—due out soon. And I feel especially happy to invite my women writing friends to consider submitting their own work to Shebooks.

For more on Shebooks, read Caroline Leavitt's interview with Laura Fraser, Editorial Director and Cofounder. Look, too, for upcoming essays and interviews on Jennifer Haupt's wonderful Psychology Today blog, One True Thing. And download a book, or two on this snowy day. It'll be the best bit of change you'll ever spend.

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Book kindnesses at the end of 2013; looking peacefully toward the year ahead

I send a big surging thank you to Wendy Robards and Serena Agusto-Cox, who generously featured Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir on their Best of the Year lists. These two young women (and they will always be young women, because of the depth of their souls) read books, know books, support books, and all of us out here are made better people by the tireless reading and writing they do.

The link to all their favorite books of the year (worth reading!), on their very wonderful blogs, are here (Wendy at Caribousmom) and here (Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit).

Also, a very big thanks to the blog known as wordchasing, which shared these beautiful thoughts about Small Damages, published this year by Penguin as a paperback.

To all of those who were so kind throughout this year—to Dr. Radway's Sarsparilla Resolvent, to Handling the Truth, to the paperback editions of Small Damages and You Are My Only—thank you. I am looking forward to the release of Going Over (Chronicle Books) in April and to the release of my mini-memoir, Nests. Flight. Sky., by Shebooks in a few weeks. I am at work, this week, on the very final edits of that Florence novel that consumed so much of me this year, and is, thanks to a trusted relationship with Tamra Tuller, rising to its full potential.

My life is easing, in other words. And my mind begins to spin new stories.

Slowly.

I am grateful to all of you who make this writing life possible, and I wish you peace and happiness from the bottom of my heart.

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Shebooks: calling all women writer friends to a remarkable contest/opportunity

I had the privilege, not long ago, of working on an 8,000-word memoir for Shebooks, an emerging e-book publisher. It was an intense, completing experience—my first return to long-form memoir in years, my chance to work again with an editor I love, my opportunity to try to understand the things I lost and the things I found in the wake of the passing of my mother.

Shebooks is the brainchild of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser. It is also the realm of Dawn Raffel and Rachel Greenfield and so many other established writers, teachers, and editors. Shebooks won a New Media Women's Entrepreneurial Fund. It has a lot of people talking.

Shebooks, as it describes itself: "Shebooks is the new e-book publisher of great short stories by women, for women. We publish long-form journalism, short memoir, and short fiction by some of the best writers in the United States and beyond, both well known and yet to be discovered."

Yesterday, Shebooks announced an incredible opportunity for writers—a contest in collaboration with Good Housekeeping. Shebooks is looking for women to write on the topic "Every Mother Has a Story." Particularly:

We're looking for submissions of 3,500-7,500 words. The contest is open to anyone 21+ who is a legal resident of the U.S., D.C., or Canada. There is a $15 submission fee and all entries must be received no later than midnight on December 15. The winner will receive $2,000 and possible publication in Shebooks and Good Housekeeping. What's more, all entrants will get a free two-month subscription to Shebooks. You can read more at www.goodhousekeeping.com/memoir-contest <http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/memoir-contest> .

 I can't think of a better organization to trust your best work to.

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