when you want so much for those who gather close to tell their stories

We have returned from Sea Change, our memoir writing workshop by the sea. And oh what a sea change it was—for us all.

Each time I leave a workshop I leave stunned and grateful for the honesty of those who have come—for their willingness to reach, then reach again. We experienced transformations this past week of a nearly unearthly kind. Writers who found their stories. Writers who found their words. Reporters who became poets. Entertainers who struck at our hearts. Badassery latticed up with tenderness...and then some.

I barely sleep during these intense days. I am, by the end, on the edge of myself, the edge of each story, the edge of each truth. Where there once was blood there runs only an urgent hope that those who have joined us write big, write more, live whole.

Like a gymnast, I bend in all directions—I stretch, I fold. Sometimes, off that balance beam, I fall. I try one more trick, take one more leap, jump, turn, catch my toe, miss. That's me, the Beth Kephart I don't even really know until I'm the only Beth Kephart I am.

At the close of this session, the writers offered me a gift—their words turned toward me. These words below are from Louise, who has joined us now three times. Louise, who has found both her story and her words. I share them because they are for all of us—all of us who teach, all of us who hope, all of us who dare to want so much for the people we (we have no choice) do love.

We are given such glorious reasons to love. These women. Oh. These women.

Blank pages, open hearts, ready minds

We come to this place, to you

A safe harbor for our souls

Unsure, yet anxious to explore

We are transfixed, transformed

Torn down and built up 

Love is at the core. 

Juncture 21, our memoir newsletter, is now out and can be accessed here. Among other things we're featuring the poets Dan Simpson and Ona Gritz, who have written extraordinarily thoughtful words about the work they do alone and together. Dan and Ona's work provided touchstones for two of our writers this past week in Cape May. We returned to their words again and again.

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Longwood Gardens, One Day Memoir Workshops, Camille T. Dungy: coming soon

In a month, 20 writers will join us at Longwood Gardens for a sold-out, one-day workshop called Seedlings.

Yesterday, in the rain, Bill and I walked the conservatory and grounds again, finalizing our plans.

Always go to Longwood Gardens in the rain.

The acres of beauty seemed to belong just to us. The upward arcing water, the platters of rain, the desert silvers and rocks, the pads and ponds. We had the orchid room to ourselves for a long five minutes. We stepped into the ballroom to hear (along with just a handful of others) the organ play. A kind volunteer urged us to lean and smell the lotus pods. The experimental garden was end-of-season deep with color and risk.

We can't wait for this day in October. We have so much we want to share and do, remember and write. We'll be creating more of these one-day events, and we'll be announcing them in the months to come here, and in Juncture Notes, our memoir newsletter featuring the top working memoirists of our time.

(Next up, in a few days, an interview with Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History (W.W. Norton).) 

Sign up for the free newsletter, if you haven't already, and stay in touch.

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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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Juncture Workshops and the voices of some of those remarkable writers we've met along the way

Last year, Bill and I launched Juncture Workshops—on a farm, by the sea. Our dream was to bridge truth to landscape, language to story, and writers to writers. All of that happened, almost miraculously. But what also happened is this: We met people who forever changed our lives.

Authentic souls.

Deep readers.

Outstanding writers.

Storytellers who had us laughing helplessly one minute and tearing up (gigantically) the next.

We're conducting four more workshops in 2017. Our newly updated web site shares the specifics on those workshops as well as images from our first gatherings. The site also unveils the faces and voices of many of those who bravely said yes to our bridge-building scheme.

With gratitude to each of them, we present the writers here, on this link. 

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the past cannot be grasped, and yet we memoirists try

Starting tomorrow, at a farm in Central Pennsylvania, it will begin. The inaugural Juncture Workshops memoir program.

The cows and the pigs and the chicks and the peacocks and the horse are ready for us, we're told. The sky and the hills. The fresh air and the peace. Those writers.

We will spend one day focused on uncertainty and time, as all memoir writers must. Recently I read Olivia Laing's gorgeous To the River and found, nested within, this paragraph. It will be shared with the writers, but also, I'm thinking, why not share it here, with you. For this is how it feels to be alive. To have hoped for something. To have almost had something. To have lost something. To allow that lostness to linger.

This is life, and this is memoir, with thanks to Olivia Laing:

It felt as if my blood had turned to mercury. I lay on the bed almost weeping, suddenly overwhelmed by the past few months. I hadn't thought I was running away, but now all I wanted was to turn tail and fly, back into the woods, the dense, enchanged Andredesleage where no one could find me or knew my name. Why does the past do this? Why does it linger instead of receding? Why does it return with such a force sometimes that the real place in which one stands or sits or lies, the place in which one's corporeal body most undeniably exists, dissolves as it were nothing more than a mirage? The past cannot be grasped; it is not possible to return in time, to regather what was lost or carelessly shrugged off, so why these sudden ambushes, these flourishes of memory?

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some words about my husband, the essential force behind Juncture

First of all, he's beautiful. You see him once, you know that. Second (since I'm already counting), his calm ways calm me. I can be out in the world, under assault, confused by the assault, and he's with me. You don't need to deal with that, he'll say. And it's true, I think, I don't. We'll have dinner, watch a movie, and the wounds of the day will be gone.

Third, and I promise that I'll be stopping here, he cares about the things he does, and I love how much he cares. Launching Juncture Workshops was Bill's idea. Crafting its image, its material self (a bank, a PO box, tax filings)—that was all his doing. The branding, the web work, the advertisements, the photography, the discovery of and interactions with the farm, the Cape May painted lady, the garden where these workshops will be held: that's all Bill. So is building the teleprompter that enabled the filming of these videos we'll soon be releasing through Udemy—videos that celebrate great memoirs, videos that suggest new ways to write—not to mention the positioning of the lights, the filtering of the camera, the selection of the music, and all the post production. So is the design (and the art) of our memoir newsletter.

Bill is in possession of uncountable talents. He's bringing all of them to Juncture. Every day he finds a new way to do even more. So that much of this weekend and part of last week he's been researching and designing one of the very special gifts the workshop attendees will be receiving. So that all this weekend and part of last week, he's taken extreme pleasure from doing just that.

Bill's joy in co-creating Juncture is contagious. His faith in me as I build the content, ready the agenda, write the scripts, and prepare (also joyfully) to teach makes this thirty-year marriage feel brand new.

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Juncture Workshops takes yet another step forward

When I left the vagaries and (often) cruelties of corporate America behind this past May, I wasn't only leaving something. I was stepping toward something new. We've called it Juncture Workshops. You know what it is—an intense focus on memoir and how it might be taught in ways that radically reinvent both community and self knowledge, literature and the single sentence.

Over the past few days we've been laying the groundwork for a new Juncture element—a series of brief video interludes that introduce (in Series 1) paired memoiristic essays (unexpected pairings, pairings that delight me, pairings I've not taught before) that reveal both the inner workings of memoir and the essential eruptions of memory.

We're filming our first one tomorrow. We'll be releasing the whole as a set on a teaching platform toward summer's end. I post this now because it's exciting to me—to discover these connections, and to share them.

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the Juncture ad

We continue, at Juncture, to reach out beyond our own borders. Here is our first full-scale ad, which will run at a large conference in August.

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on teaching memoir (the Juncture Workshop files)

It occurs to me that you might have noticed that I'm posting less frequently on the blog these days. In part, that is to spare you.

(You're welcome.)

In part it's because I'm devoting so much time to reading and planning the Juncture memoir newsletter, which is sent out to our list once a month. Juncture Notes is free, and you can sign up here to read my interviews with memoirists, my reflections on the form, and the work that our readers send in, among other things. (Juncture Notes also features the original work of my multi-media artist husband. His clay. His photographs. His 3-D images.)

But much of my absence here on the blog can be directly tied to the image above. I call these the Juncture Workshop files. It is a long-ongoing project—a massive effort to cull, save, sort the memoir thoughts I have, the excerpts I love, the exercises that occur to me in the middle of each night—all so that I can teach most effectively both at Penn and at the five-day Juncture memoir workshops we're conducting in McClure, PA, in September, and in Cape May, NJ, in November. (More details on both here.)

I'm not close to done. I'll never be done. I've just ordered eight more books—and a new bookcase. In fact, within two weeks one room out of the seven rooms in my house will be devoted solely to memoir—to the hundreds of memoirs that I own, to the files I am building, to the essays of those who are joining our workshops.

Call me obsessed.

It's all right.

I get that all the time.

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Juncture Writing Workshops is bringing memoir to Cape May, NJ, in November. Join us?

SEA CHANGE
Cape May, NJ
November 1 – 6, 2016


Cape May, NJ. It’s an island, actually, a National Historic Landmark City that was home to Colonial Era whalers and fishermen before it became a favorite retreat for sea-breeze-seeking Philadelphians. Today the town is famous for its multi-hued “painted lady” houses, its wrap-around porches and rocking chairs, its original boutiques and restaurants, and the trees that canopy its streets. Beyond the white sands, dolphins slice the waves. In the wildlife preserves, bogs, and salt marshes, birds sing, turtles crawl, and muskrats build their funny houses.

I grew up visiting Cape May; my favorite uncle lived there. When Bill and I recently discovered a capacious, newly renovated circa-1872 painted lady just blocks from the beach and the town, we knew we’d found the perfect setting for our November Juncture workshop. A private room for each writer who comes to stay. A sunny gathering place. A wrap-around porch. The sea. The birds.

We’ll learn from some of the greatest memoirs ever written—and write our own. Through a combination of readings, guided exercises, and critiques, we will acquire a firm understanding of what memoir is (and what it isn’t) and work toward the development of meaningful themes and sustaining scenes. We will generate and refine new pages, craft a prologue, and share our work in evening readings. We will walk the beach, find the birds, take photographs, meet formally and informally.

A beautifully designed book featuring the images and words of the week will commemorate our time together.

If you are interested, please do let us know by sending us a message through this Juncture Writing Workshops site.

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Juncture Notes and News

With our September memoir workshop (on a working farm) now just one person shy of full, we've set out to find a new location for those who have expressed interest in working with us.

(If you're interested in that one last September spot—the chance to work with what has turned out to be a most remarkable gathering of writers, please let us know.)

We're now a few days away from announcing the details of our second workshop, tentatively slated for early November, and if you're interested in writing, reading, and knowing at a place that may be sandy, say, and alive with sea air and wild birds, send us a note at Juncture.

In the meantime, we'll be releasing Juncture Notes 3, our free memoir newsletter, early next week. In this issue, we'll be talking about Diana Abu-Jaber's new memoir (and hearing directly from her), among other things. If you're not on our list but would like to be, please sign up through our Juncture Writing Workshops site.

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Launching a monthly memoir newsletter; let us know if you are interested

 
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We know when we start to exaggerate.We know when we “lie” to make things fit or to make the story turn out a certain, perfectly symmetrical, deeply self-congratulatory way.We know when what we write will not resonate with others who have lived the adventure alongside us.We know what we are doing.

Next Monday, we'll release the first issue of a monthly newsletter dedicated to the art of memoir.

I'll be sharing thoughts about essential memoirs (you must read this), about the making of memoir, and about the things I continue to learn as I teach and write the form. And I'll be sharing (with the authors' permission) some of the work we produce at Juncture Workshops.

Interested? Share your email address in the comment form here, or through the private messaging of my Facebook or Twitter accounts.

NOTE: To those kind souls demonstrating such interest — I'm able now to pick up your email addresses without them ever showing up for public display. Trust that I have you. If you don't see the newsletter by end of day Monday, circle back around. I want to protect your email privacy. 

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Juncture Workshops—learn more about our September gathering on a farm

We've been so blessed by the response to our announcement regarding the launch of Juncture Workshops, our series of memoir workshops.

Recently we put together an informational brochure for those who think that the inaugural workshop—which is taking place from September 11 - September 16 on a farm in McClure, PA— might be just right for them.

Interested? Please contact us through the Juncture Workshops web site, and we'll send a PDF your way.

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Juncture Workshops announces (officially) its first five-day workshop, coming this September. Join us?

I've been alluding to our landscape-emboldened five-day memoir workshops for quite some time now.

We're rolling this thing out.

Here, at last, is more information about what we'll be doing, why we're doing it, and what those five days on a Central Pennsylvania farm (an hour from Harrisburg) will be like, come this September.

If you are interested in learning more, please send us a note through the contact form—or any other way that works for you.

All photos and web design are courtesy of my artistic husband and partner in this venture.

Read the full web site to find out how his artistry will be part of the program.

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what would you think if (a query to you, about a memoir program we're imagining)

We escaped to the mist and hills of the Shenandoah Valley and pondered the days and years ahead. The what next (again) of life. With the wind blowing and the rain pouring and the rivers swelling we imagined a future spent creating and delivering something new—a one-of-a-kind workshop exploring the many ways we find and represent the truth.

We're in the earliest planning stages, of course. But if you think you'd be interested in a program that would come to where you live and work with you and 14 other writers and seekers, please do let me know.

We think this idea has promise. We would begin delivering the program next year.

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