Tell the Truth. Make It Matter.: forward movement is our measure

Tell the Truth. Make It Matter., our illustrated memoir workbook, is now available through Baker & Taylor and Ingram, as well as Amazon. We're hearing beautiful stories about the book's introduction into workshop and teaching environments. We're reading blog posts inspired by the pages. We're grateful to the private high school that has just purchased copies for its entire tenth grade. I'm excited to teach from its pages at another local high school gathering in a few days. And we're really grateful to local bookstores that are saying yes.

Two years in the making. Still a long way to go. But we are making progress, bit by bit. Forward movement is our measure.

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a generous review/interview for Tell the Truth. Make It Matter., and more

We rented a car and we drove. To Columbus, Ohio, through Terra Haute, to St. Louis, Joplin, Oklahoma City, Santa Fe, Ruidoso, Marfa, Fort Worth, Hope, Memphis, Lexington, Charleston, WV, and then, yesterday, home.

It was research. It was escape. It was a necessary immersion in our country.

It was our anniversary, too. Thirty-two years together.

While we were gone, Serena Agusto-Cox, a poet, reader, and reviewer kindly reviewed our new memoir workbook, Tell the Truth. Make it Matter., then asked me questions for an interview. We had not brought a computer with us, and so I tapped out words with two fingers on a borrowed couch and hoped any nonsense might be forgiven.

I am always enormously grateful to Serena for doing so much, so kindly, so consistently, even as her own career takes off with a first major reading and more and more yeses from journals.

The review is here.

The interview is here.

Gratitude is everywhere.

We also learned, as we drove into Memphis (fittingly enough) of the stellar SLJ review given to the anthology, Behind the Music, which is the brainchild of K.M. Walton. "This anthology about music hits all the right notes," the reviewer wrote, and we are all so happy about that.

My review of Julia Fierro's The Gypsy Moth Summer appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

And I received word that Love: A Philadelphia Affair will be available as a $12 paperback from Temple University Press come October.

I return to 2,000 photos to sort through (this one above was taken in New Mexico), an enormously interesting memoir to review for the Chicago Tribune, a promised story to the Inquirer, and a novel, now half-written, that requires its second half.

A novel that has found its second half.

I must settle down and make room for it. I must remember, in other words, how to sit in one place and think, for I am accustomed to rumbling now.

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Read Juncture Notes 16 here: behind the scenes of the illustrated workbook and exquisite interview with essayist Megan Stielstra

In this issue of Juncture Notes, which can be read in its entirety here, we are privileged to have Megan Stielstra's thoughts on writing, teaching, and the many stories that bind us. Reading this interview, with its many turns and links, will give you a summer's worth of musings...and a very good reason to buy her new collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life.

We also go behind the scenes, in this issue, to take a look at our brand-new memoir workbook, Tell the Truth. Make It Matter., a collaborative content/illustration/design project, and something we are excited to announce has already been adopted into a high school curriculum.

Thanks to my husband, Bill, for the drawing above; it also appears in the workbook.

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Imagining an Empathy Project in Every Community: In this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer

Shortly after Bill and I returned from our Juncture memoir workshop in Frenchtown, PA, I wrote here about the Empathy Project that had found its way into the heart of that very special community.

I couldn't stop thinking about it all. About the writers I love and about those we'd met. About the possibilities that inhere in listening. And so I thought out loud again about the project for the pages of this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer. 

I share that link here. I ask the open question: What would happen if communities across this country (this world) orchestrated their own Empathy Projects?

With thanks, as always, to the Inquirer's Kevin Ferris, for all the ways he allows me to explore the passions that define and shape me. (And for including a link to Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. That makes me happy, too.)

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Tell the Truth. Make It Matter.

A few days ago I shared some of the interior pages of a memoir workbook long in the making here at Juncture.

Today I am happy to announce that the book is launched. It can be ordered here.

In Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. Beth Kephart offers an insider’s look at the
making of true tales—and an illustrated workbook to guide the wild ride. Combining smartly selected samples with abundantly fresh ideas, dozens of original exercises with cautions, questions with answers, Kephart inspires, encourages, and persistently believes in those with a story to tell.

Write this, Truth says. Read this. Consider this. Discover who you are. Have some honest fun with words.

There are questions here about the lives we've led: What do we remember about our first lie? What have we learned from disappointment? Why can’t we remember? Why can’t we forget? What do we know about umbrellas? There are thoughts about the crafting of stories, the discovery of voice, and the development of universal themes. There are quotes and hints and exercises and words from some of today’s leading memoir practitioners. 

There's room to write and draw.

Sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is reflective. Sometimes it goes big and sometimes small. It's progressive, one exercise building into the next, toward one truth and then another.

We hope you'll be as excited as we are.

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Introducing a new (beautifully illustrated) memoir workbook

Over the past two years, I've been writing a memoir workbook—a page-by-page introduction to the form enriched by prompts designed to lead you directly into the heart of your story.

(Not idle prompts. Not prompts as afternoon distractions. Prompts that teach the form and open doors to memory and meaning. This workbook is supplemental to Handling the Truth. It does not repeat it.)

Over the past many months, Bill has been designing and illustrating those pages, crafting a book that complements our five-day memoir workshops, our monthly (content rich) memoir newsletter, and, soon, on-line courses at Juncture.

Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. will soon be available through Amazon.

I'm so happy to share two spread previews from different chapters in this 210-page book here.

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