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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books and mud: remembering the flooding of the Arno (and One Thing Stolen)

Oh, bless that Taylor Norman of Chronicle Books, forever uplifting, forever near. Her email of yesterday shared this news that the 50th anniversary of the terrible flooding of Arno will be honored in San Francisco's own American Bookbinders Museum.

This was the natural and cultural catastrophe that inspired my novel One Thing Stolen (Chronicle Books). This forever-proximate possibility of culture (and the art of the mind) being lost to forces beyond anyone's control.

As Matthew barrels down on this earth, as natural disasters hovers, as we keep looking for more credible ways to feel secure, this story of the Arno spilling into and across a great city, into the rooms of great museums, into the basements of churches, into homes and shops is pressingly relevant. This story of those Mud Angels who brought their wings to the resurrection of that place still matters.

We depend on one another to see each other through. To dig down into the muck and salvage beauty.

My praise, then, to the American Bookbinders Museum. And my thanks to Taylor, for letting me know.

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This Is the Story of You: The Scholastic Edition

A few weeks ago, the very lovely (inside! out!) Taylor Norman wrote with what was, to me, surprising news: This Is the Story of You has found some lucky momentum.

We trace much of that momentum to the book's gorgeous cover (thank you, Chronicle Books), to its timeliness in this weather-worried world, and to word of mouth (thank you, kind readers). We trace some of it the Jr Library Guild's generous selection. And now we also have Scholastic Books to thank, for making Story a book club selection.

Taylor just sent along this photo of a Scholastic edition book box.

To which I reply, as I so often do when Taylor Norman is in the house: woot.

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a gift of gifts, on book launch day, from Taylor Norman of Chronicle

Yesterday the mysterious box arrived with the warning—and I did heed—DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 4/12.

But now it's dark and dawn here, and opening is legal, and so I've bladed through, popped the lid, and dug between long strands of confetti to find the words of Taylor Norman, the Chronicle Books editor of enormous wisdom and heart who, following the departure of dear Tamra Tuller, saw This Is the Story of You through to this day, launch day.

I've staggered back. I've shouted Oh My Gosh to the sleepy house. I've tremblingly carried this gift (which includes chocolate, by the way) to my husband, and shakingly exclaimed: "Roller skate keys. Like the kind my Mira wears around her neck as she skates from one end of her barrier island to the other, ahead of that monster storm."

(I did have to explain, just like that, for my husband, bless his magnificent heart, has not read Story.)

And then I said: "The key gives Mira a key-shaped bruise on her chest. The key is real, and symbolic."

And then I said: "That Taylor Norman! Oh my gosh. That Taylor."

Wow. That's what I keep saying as I type these words, my fingers still trembling.

Wow. 

To beaches and those who love them. To friendship in the wake of catastrophe. To our Modes, whatever they may be, that carry us from one end of things to the other. World, we give you This Is the Story of You.

To Taylor, I say again: Wow. And thank you.

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the One Thing Stolen surprise at Radnor Memorial Library

Some things aren't surprising when I am hosted by the Radnor Memorial Library. How gracious Pamela Sedor forever is. How delicious (and pretty) is that cake. How kind my friends, husband, and father are. I hope my gratitude is felt and known. I am fully aware of how precious time is, and what it means when time is set aside to support another's floating dreams.

But last night, after photographs and stories of this regional home were shared, after I read from One Thing Stolen, after I shared the opening pages of This Is the Story of You (and gave a copy to Lucky Number 9)—after all that, when I was signing books, I turned over a copy of One Thing Stolen and saw a new cover staring out at me. The formerly black title had turned red (and glossy). There were A.S. King words over my name. The back cover was different, too.

What had happened here?

A little detective work with Annie and Pam as the night wound down, and I learned this: One Thing Stolen has gone into a second printing and Chronicle Books has taken the time to dress the book up newly—new color, Amy's words. It's like those wondrous moments when I come in from a very long day and discover folded laundry on the kitchen table, the work of a secret elf. This thing had been done, quietly done, and there was my gratitude again.

So many, many thanks to Pam and Annie of Radnor, to my friends who came, to the ladies of the Wayne Art Center (oh we, the Hidden Gems), to Kelly, Cyndi, Marie, Tom, Hilary, Bill, another Bill, and Dad, and to Temple University Press, which gave me Love: A Philadelphia Affair and Chronicle Books, which gave me a second printing of One Thing Stolen as well as the gorgeous cover and packaging (and Taylor, thank you for caring so much, you read it again and then again with dedication; you kept asking; you kept pressing; I am grateful; we've made it all right at last) of This Is the Story of You.

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Chronicle, you make beautiful books. Thank you.

Two weeks ago I shared the absolutely gorgeous cover for This Is the Story of You—my novel due out from Chronicle next April. It's a beach novel and a mystery. A survival story and a tale of friendship and a lost sisterhood.

Last night, after a long day, I was sitting on the couch in a form of melt when dear Taylor Norman of Chronicle sent along the final PDF file for the book's ARC.

Friends, it's beautiful. Carefully considered, page by page. Remarkably built. Accompanied by friends. (A.S. King and Patty McCormick, you're here with me.) And also — a most moving and welcome surprise — a gorgeous reader letter from Ginee Seo, Children's Publishing Director.

The package, the letter, the care, the assurance that my friends with travel with me down this path—Chronicle, you make some of the most beautiful books in this business. I'm so proud to have traveled to Berlin, then to Florence, and now to the Jersey Shore with you.

Thank you.

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are we in ultimate control of our own artistic impulses?

In just a few hours, I'll be on the Bryn Mawr campus with my dear friend Cynthia Reeves and her students to talk about Handling the Truth, Flow, the empathetic imagination, the past and the present and—well—I have far too much planned for the hour and twenty minutes we have, but I guess that is who I have become. Persistent. Insistent. Still wrecked and unreasonable with the impossibility of it all.

But this one One Thing Stolen thing before I go. The novel, due out shortly, is, as I have written here on Huffington Post, about a neurodegenerative disease—about the slow peeling away of my Nadia's language and historical self. Nadia, in One Thing Stolen, becomes trapped in a cycle of art making. She cannot stop herself.

A few weeks ago, Taylor Norman, a young and wondrously talented editor at Chronicle Books, took the time to send me this true story of a former lawyer whose traumatic brain injury resulted in the emergence of an unexpected artistic talent. This is art arising from injury and not disease. But it is, in so many ways, a story that yields insights into Nadia and into the question: Are we are in ultimate control over our artistic leanings, aesthetics, impulses? Can we definitively source the many ways that story, color, and shape erupt in us?

I would wager that we aren't, and that we can't.

From the story that Taylor sent that first appeared in the NY Daily News:

Doctors diagnosed Fagerberg with a traumatic brain injury. He suffered memory loss and had problems with processing language.

The accident ended his legal career. To cope, he turned to art therapy - and suddenly realized that he had a particular gift for painting.

"A little trigger went off and I became hooked. It became a compulsion," Fagerberg told KHOU, adding: "I see everything sort of in composition, so everywhere I look it's a painting."

The whole story, and a video, can be found here.

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Branded incapable, she made exquisite art

There's a very special young woman at Chronicle Books (I think I've mentioned this) named Taylor Norman. Has books—and kindness (and smarts)—in her blood. Is out there reading our manuscripts, tweeting our stories, talking about our books, talking us off cliffs if, indeed, we find ourselves standing on cliffs.

A few days ago, Taylor, who, read One Thing Stolen, my novel about Florence, Italy, art, obsession, and mental wellness, when it wasn't much of a book at all (oh, poor Tamra, and oh, poor Taylor), sent this link from The New Yorker. It tells the tale of an exquisite fiber artist, Judith Scott, whose work involved the making of secrets—embedding umbrellas and tree branches and other found objects within weaves and knots.

But that is not all of who Judith was. Judith was a twin sister, born with Down syndrome, whose profound deafness went undiagnosed while she lived out her years in an institution. Here is the story, in the words of New Yorker writer Andrea K. Scott:

Scott died in 2005, at the age of sixty-one, and didn’t start making art until her mid-forties. She was born with Down syndrome, went deaf as a child, and never learned how to speak. Languishing in an institution in her native Ohio for more than three decades with her deafness undiagnosed, Scott was considered so beyond help that she wasn’t allowed to use crayons. In 1986, her fraternal twin, Joyce, brought Scott to San Francisco and enrolled her in Creative Growth, a community art center for disabled adults. At first, Scott dabbled in drawings. A smattering are in the show, but they’re no match for the radical beauty that followed, when Scott took a textile workshop and had a breakthrough, loosely binding sticks into an uncanny totemic cluster. As her work gained complexity, the Bay Area began to take note; by 2001, Scott had been the subject of major shows in Switzerland, Japan, and New York.

So much about this story sears. And yes, Taylor, this reminds me, in so many ways, of Nadia Cara, my character, whose art is also a secret as well as a compulsion coming from a secret place.

Judith Scott's work is now on display at the Brooklyn Museum. I intend to see it.

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