Handling the Truth: the first-pass pages arrive

And soon I will sit and read again and hope that all I meant to say, all I need to say, is here, and here clearly.

Thank you, Lauren Marino and Susan Barnes of Gotham, for seeing this book through.

Read more...

my cup overflows—reviews of Flow and Small Damages; kindness from Gotham

My cup is overflowing.

On this rainy afternoon, I would like to thank the one and only Ed Goldberg for reading Flow, my Philadelphia river book, and having so much good to say on his spectacular, shared blog, Two Heads Together.  Ed, you are so integral to my writing life.  I am blessed by your kindness in so many ways.

Through Twitter, a tool I have yet to master, but a tool through which I have made new friends, I learned of two spectacular new reviews of Small Damages.  One, by the bloggess, Love Is Not a Triangle, made me smile in so many ways, and had me sharing, with the bloggess, my thoughts about the Small Damages sequel I hope to someday write.  The whole is here.

The second is by the good people of teenreads—or, I should say, by the super duper Terry Miller Shannon of teenreads—who wrote, among other things, "Characters are so fully realized, they could walk off the page.... Small Damages is on the short side but is nothing short of a glorious triumph for Kephart."  Those words will put sun into anybody's rainy day.

Finally, today, I want to thank Susan Barnes, Lauren Marino, and a certain publicist named Beth—all on the Gotham team.  I had called Susan with a concern not at all of Gotham's making.  She listened and took action at once.  With tremendous compassion and care, the team relieved me of a percolating anxiety.  They didn't have to do this.  Some publishing teams might not have.  But Gotham did, and I will always be grateful. 

Read more...

Handling the Truth: the cover reveal

Last week, Lauren Marino, my Gotham editor, shared what I think is a most stunning cover for Handling the Truth, which is due out from Gotham (Penguin USA) next August.  To Lauren and to Susan Barnes, who has answered so many questions along the way, my deepest thanks.  To Amy Rennert, who has cared so much about this work, thanks, too.  This cover is sensational—a great blessing on a book that means so very much to me. 

The catalog copy:

In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, a critically acclaimed National Book Award finalist shares inspiration and practical advice for writing—and living with—memoir.

Writing memoir is a deeply personal, and consequential, undertaking.  As the acclaimed author of five memoirs spanning significant turning points in her life, Beth Kephart has been both blessed and bruised by the genre. In Handling the Truth, she thinks out loud about the form—on how it gets made, on what it means to make it, on the searing language of truth, on the thin line between remembering and imagining, and, finally, on the rights of memoirists.   Drawing on proven writing lessons and classic examples, on the work of her students and on her own memories of weather, landscape, color, and love, Kephart probes the wrenching and essential questions that lie at the heart of memoir. A beautifully written work in its own right, Handling the Truth opens Kephart’s memoir-making classroom—and thoughts—to all those who read or seek to write the truth.

Kephart is a very gifted and insightful writer.”— USA Today

 “[Kephart] writes eloquently.”—The New York Times Book Review

Read more...