Beth Kephart's Blog, page 108

DR. RADWAY: The School Library Journal Review

I'm here on this blog this morning thanking Etta Anton for this kind review of Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent in School Library Journal. I love that she pairs this book with Dangerous Neighbors as well as Laurie Halse Anderson's Fever as books that open door to Philadelphia for younger readers.



That had been my ambition all along.



Thank you, Etta.



And thank you, Gary Kramer of Temple University Press, for letting me know.

video outtakes from the memoir summit

Memoir "Summit" Rosemont College from Jill Frechie on Vimeo.



The talented Jill Frechie has produced a 4 minute video of the Rosemont Memoir Summit, featuring myself, Linda Joy Myers, Bob Waxler, and Jerry Waxler.



I share that here.

Halloween Morning

Perhaps it's because Halloween falls the day after the anniversary of my grandmother's passing, but I could never fully enter into Halloween glee. I greet the day with a sense of melancholy. I fail to carve pumpkins. I own no costumes.



I do buy candy.



But early this morning, working, I looked up and saw the darkness ceding and the fog holding and something about that made me happy.



A view from my office window of this day, as it began.



To all you happy tricker-treaters: Blessings.

with my talismans nearby, I write for Bank Street

Here I sit, my talismans nearby.



A stash of glass apples. A cyclops eye. Four paper dolls ascending to the sky. A bird on a limb by a Florentine artist. A gift from my feathers and fur friend, Beth Beverly. I am writing the talk that I will give at Bank Street Mini Conference on November 9th. I am thinking how lucky I am to have a job like this, which is no precise and single job, really, but a succession of possibilities, of questions asked, of the new next in a conversation that started long ago.



Here I sit, and I am writing sideways.


It's just an idea that I have.

"This is perhaps the most exciting thing I have ever mailed you,"

 









writes Tamra Tuller.



And, indeed, it is.



What gorgeous (GORGEOUS) work Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books have done on behalf of Going Over. Look at the neon pop of green. Look at the stenciled Ada, my heroine, who was inspired by one of Chronicle's own (look at the second picture; do you see the likeness?). Look at the boy and how he jumps. Look at the graffiti grit.



Sometimes everything is just right.



This is one of these times.



All love to Tamra Tuller, my editor, to whom this book is dedicated. All love to Jennifer Tolo Pierce, the designer who gorgeous-fied this book—inside and out. And all love to Ginee Seo, Lara Starr, Stephanie Wong, and Amber Morley of Chronicle Books.



It is a privilege.

the Jen Doll/Hairpin/Handling conversation and (wow) First Person Arts

If you're looking for a new entertainment channel, you can't do much better than Jen Doll, whose essays, opinions, and reviews appear in all the most important places (New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine, Village Voice, The Atlantic, Vulture) and whose Twitter Feed is my personal go-to late night/early morning/any time of day First Aid Kit. Jen made my last year when she reviewed Small Damages for the NYTBR. She made my 2013 BEA when we met for the first time. And she made my yesterday train ride when she sent word that a conversation we'd had about memoir (Jen has her own due out next year and it sounds a — Ma — Zing) was now up and running at The Hairpin.



I am not an inherently cool dude-ess, but chilling with Jen makes me feel as if I am. And either she was typing uber fast when we were having our phone conversation a few weeks ago, or she has perfect handwriting/perfect recall, because I've never seen my own words transcribed with such precision.



So here. Meet Jen Doll, if you haven't already, by following this link to our conversation.



You'll find that she's a tad addictive.



And on another topic entirely: Did my fellow WXPNers/First Person Arts performers knock it out of the park at Kelly Writers House last night, or what? We'd gathered to give Philadelphia a taste of what is to come at the First Person Arts Festival, which launches November 6 and features an incredible line-up of storytellers, humorists, performance artists, and writers (Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Rita Dove, Ana Castillo, and Dani Shapiro among them). Supremely seductive stories got told. I encourage you to tune in on November 4, 8 PM at WXPN 88.5 to hear these hip hopping storytellers for yourself.



(And another round of hugs to Angela and Chang, for being my personal cheering section.)



Thanks to Karina Kacala, who organized the event, and thanks to Becca Jennings and Alli Katz, for holding our hands, and thanks to Andrew Panebianco, Katie Samson, Raphael Xavier, Yaba Blay, fellow artists, and thanks to Michaela Majoun and her inimitable radio ways. And come see us at First Person Arts. I'm on stage with Dani Shapiro on November 10 at 4 o'clock at Christ Church Neighborhood House. And then I return on November 16, 11 o'clock, for a two-hour memoir workshop called The Spices of Life. Registration is required.



See you then?



Say yes.

two sisters spoke

At the service honoring the life of Christopher Yasick, two sisters spoke—one in the pages of the memorial program, the other out loud, to the many in that church. We were leaning forward. We were watching the colored light flicker on the cathedral stones. We were watching the big flapping wings of the bird that flew close, then flew close again. We were watching each other. We were holding our breath.



Two sisters spoke.



It should not be the responsibility of family to appease the hearts of friends, but this is what the Yasicks do. They say, Celebrate the life that was. They say, to those who have passed on, We loved you, you amazed us, you were kind to us, you were ridiculous, you were mysterious, you did good. They bring a marching band to a cathedral courtyard and ask the kids to blare away at their horns and bang away at their drums so that the young man who was lost too soon (he was a brother, he was a son, he was so much to so many, he was full of the possible) will again be buffeted by his alma mater song. They lift their longhorn hands to the sky. They lead us, in the loud stillness, on.



Two sisters spoke.



I often wonder what it is about language that works. I often think of how the simplest words are the loveliest words, about how much meaning rhythm carries, about how truth is the thing we crave the most. At a brother's service, two sisters spoke, and we leaned in, and we were carried forward, and it was brave, and it was beautiful, and it was sad, and it was everything, and it hurt so much, and it was right, perfectly right, eternally lasting.



How we wished that the two sisters' beauty was the final power, that we could reach out to them, as they had reached out to us, with words that somehow worked.

Introducing Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing

When writer/teacher/friend Jennie Nash invited me to share an excerpt from Handling the Truth in the journal Compose, I had no idea just how beautiful this magazine was. I trusted Jennie; that was enough. I said yes before digging further.



Yesterday, Compose released its second issue. This biannual, digital magazine has Suzannah Windsor, Jennie Nash, Lisa Romeo, Andrew Rojas, Reem Al-Omari, Tamara Pratt, Christi Craig, and Tiffany Turpin Johnson on its mastthead. It features both new and emerging writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—and interviews with such powerhouses as Eva Langston and Rebecca Hazleton.



The Fall 2013 issue is dear to my heart, not just because it includes a beautifully designed excerpt from Handling the Truth (I'm in love with the chosen image; it's so perfect for memoir), but because it has an essay called "Mean Mail" by my friend Katrina Kenison (we had talked about this incident in her life; it is amazing to read of it here and now) and an interview with the ever-kind and ever-smart Marion Roach Smith.



And plenty more.



Please take a look at what some very smart and generous literary people can do when they put their minds and talents together.



This is Compose .

Eric Xu publishes a poem, Christine dances at Annenberg, and we celebrate the moments

There are three beautiful people in this photograph and one very lucky one. The three? A scientist/poet. A scientist/dancer. A scientist/artist. Phenomenal writers, all.



(Scientist, for me, is anyone brave enough to take any course that leads toward a degree in engineering or the medical arts.)



These are some of my last-semester students (Angela, sadly, arrived too late for this photograph), which is to say, these are members of my family. Eric, over there on the left, just had a magnificent poem published in Apiary, and he has sent it to me, and I have read it, and I am not in any way surprised by its quality, nor by its heart, nor by its collectively powerful imagery. Not surprised, for I know Eric. I know the strength of his character and the reach of his art.



If you click on the link here, you will find his poem, which was written during his class with Professor Greg Djanikian. Greg's office sits above my classroom at Penn. On very good days, I have a chance to talk with him. It's because of Greg that I came to Penn to teach memoir as an adjunct. Because of him that I was allowed to teach a second class after conducting a first and sometimes (because of its small size) wobbly class.



Because of him that I have people like Eric in my life.



And also Christine, who is performing this evening and tomorrow evening in a show that she herself choreographed. Curtains are up at 7 PM at the Annenberg Prince Theater. I'd give anything to be there, but I cannot. Please go in my stead. Give her your love and your awe, for Christine inspires awe; she is endowed with specialness.



And also Chang, our remarkable artist, our no-way-is-English-her-second-language writer, our kind soul and purveyor of hot chocolate, our wise one. If you go up and down the campus at Penn you may find her writing, you may find her drawing, you may find her solving Organic Chemistry problems. She does it all. She does it with love.



And also Angela, who taught us all so much about love and forgiveness, who made us cry, who wrote the heck out of every single sentence. Someday I will have a picture of her, too, but in the meantime, look for beauty.



I am, as I said, the lucky one.



And I'll be back on the campus Monday night, at 7 PM, for a Live at the Kelly Writers House taping, joining Andrew Panebianco, Katie Samson, and Raphael Xavier for a WXPN event with Michaela Majoun. We'll be there on behalf of the 12th Annual  First Person Arts Festival, which is launching in a matter of days now. Toni Morrison will be in town for that festival. Rita Dove. Ana Castillo. Sonia Sanchez. Others. I'll be joining Dani Shapiro on the stage and also teaching a memoir workshop focusing on food and kitchen spices, and so we'll be at Penn on Monday, talking about all this with WXPN.



Where would I be without my alma mater?

the future of caring and the art of the possible: Accolade

We spent most of the last two days at a company called Accolade—my husband/business partner taking photographs while I engaged in dialogue with one employee after another.



No, that isn't right. The word employee doesn't fit with a company like this, where family is the atmosphere and optimism is the mood. Employee doesn't begin to evoke or suggest the quality of conversations that go on inside that building, the intensity of the compassion, the basic joy that those who are building Accolade get from showing up each day. So much is broken in this world. So many people are left stranded. The landscape we've inherited can seem to be all pitched hills and dark valleys, slick rocks and broken trails, and then you step inside a company called Accolade, and you listen to people talk, and you think: There's a way out of some of the mess we're in. There are very smart people engaging with (and extending forward) a humane and proven plan. There are people (called Accolade Health Assistants) who pick up the phone and know what to say to those who are sick, those who are weary, those who do not know, from one day to the next, how they will pay for the care they need or the food that must be set down on their tables.



I've known Tom Spann, this company's leader, for many years. I wrote of him here, when he was again acknowledged as one of Philadelphia's most extraordinary executives. But it has only been during these past five months that I've had a chance to spend time at this company myself—collecting the stories, writing the narrative, being led toward a different idea of what the future of health care might be, which is to say (in Accolade lingo) the future of caring. Because health is a big thing and not a clutch of diagnoses and treatment plans. Health is about the way we live. A simple concept. A complex concept. The pulse of the purpose at Accolade.



I may write fiction in the dark hours of some mornings, and sometimes I teach and write the truth. But it is equally meaningful to step inside a company like Accolade and get caught up in the art of the possible.