Beth Kephart's Blog, page 115

Early morning, San Francisco

I

I have returned to a city I have always loved. I sit by the ferries, watching the day begin. In just a few hours I will hug Tamra Tuller again. Meet Lara Starr, so well named. Take a tour of Chronicle Books. Have lunch with Lara and Stephanie Wong. Hold a copy of GOING OVER in my hands for the first See the sights with Tamra. Have dinner with Tamra and Ginee Seo and a spectacular group of librarians and booksellers. For all of this I am grateful.

I will walk the edge of this city in the meantime.

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Launching Dr. Radway at the Radnor Memorial Library. Join us?

Earlier this summer New City Community Press/Temple University Press released a book that means so much to me—Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. It's a book about poor Philadelphia in 1871, a book about Eastern State Penitentiary, Baldwin Locomotives Works, My River (notice the caps), two best friends, and an heroic blowzy named Pearl. Among other things.


Reviewers have been extremely kind, some of their thoughts here.



I'll be officially launching that book in just a few weeks at Radnor Memorial Library—reading from it for the first time, talking about it for the first time, sharing it, because that's what we do.



I hope you will consider joining us. Huge thanks to Pamela Sedor, who throws a wonderful party.

Blurred Lines: Dancing the Cha Cha with Scott Lazarov. Cause sometimes you have to.

You know how sometimes you can't possibly do one more thing...and then you do? That was my today, in a nutshell.



I won't go into it. I will only say that highlights
included: Taking my dear Dad to lunch at a fine Mexican restaurant. Not
finishing the novel I promised to finish. Finding out that Handling the Truth was
named a Top Ten Book of September by BookPage. Being less than lovely
to a client (for five minutes; I'm so sorry). Taking my student,
Stephanie, to dinner. But not eating dinner, so that I could go on a
date with my husband for dinner. Not being ready for San Francisco.
Getting ready for San Francisco.



And dancing this cha cha,
with Scott Lazarov, of DanceSport Academy. My husband was doing the
filming. Soon my husband and I will be dancing this together. On a stage. In front of normal
people. I am not a normal person.



You gotta do what you can do.

Thank you, BookPage, for naming HANDLING THE TRUTH a Top Ten September Book

Wow. What a happy thing to learn from dear Florinda that BookPage named Handling the Truth a Top Ten Book for September. Thrilled about this, of course.



And full of gratitude.



The full list is here.

Five Days at Memorial (Sheri Fink); The Kindness of a Teacher (Jennie Nash)

Early this morning, these two things, unrelated, except they both involve people I adore.



First, I am celebrating the remarkable work of Sheri Fink, a PhD, MD, and writer whom I first met when chairing the PEN First Nonfiction Award in 2004. War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival, was, for us, a deserving finalist, a tale about medicine during the genocide in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Sheri, in person, was exquisite. She went on to do important things, winning a Pulitzer Prize, a National Magazine Award, and countless other honors. Today her new book is out—Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital—and Jason Berry in the New York Times , along with many others, is giving it a rave. I could not be happier for this extraordinary woman.



Second, I am celebrating—and thanking—Jennie Nash, a long time friend and excellent writer, who surprised me with these kind words about Handling the Truth. Jennie is the kind of teacher who genuinely loves her students, who wants them to succeed, who gives them everything she can, then steps aside and applauds their journey. I am so touched that Jennie took the time to think so creatively about Handling. Her words are here. But included in these words is a special offering to students of writing. If you have a chance to work with Jennie, do.

In today's Wall Street Journal Speakeasy, I'm talking about photographs in memoir.

Several weeks ago, I tore most of my memoirs off the shelf to research an idea I had about those who use photographs to amplify their memoirs. Dorothy Allison, Patti Smith, Michael Ondaatje, David Carr, Orhan Pamuk, Calvin Trillin—the list is long, and it made me happy to sit for a while and work the details out.



That essay runs today in the Wall Street Journal blog, Speakeasy. Many thanks to Beth Parker at Gotham for helping me find its right home.



This essay, on photographs, is part of a series of essays I've lately been writing about the memoir form. Today, in the The Millions, for example, I write about the conversational in memoir. Last week, I wrote in The Pennsylvania Gazette about the students I love.



Thank you, Beth Parker of Gotham, for finding a home for me at Speakeasy, and thank you Speakeasy.


More of my thoughts on the memoir form can be found on this dedicated Handling page.

Writing on Memoir in The Millions. Being Reviewed in Bookslut for Dr. Radway. Going to San Francisco.

Summer eases away. Yesterday I let it. Some rain, some sun. Some breeze, some stillness. Reading, and then writing, and then writing again. Making a list of all the books that I must read. Buying several.



By Thursday evening of this week, I'll be in one of my favorite American cities—San Francisco—to conduct three very different (from each other) Handling the Truth workshops at Book Passages, Books Inc., and the Flamingo Conference Resort and Spa (located in Santa Rosa, conducted on behalf of the Redwood Writers Workshop).



(For more on the nearly twenty events scheduled for the next few months, please look for the events on the left-column of this blog.)



I'll also be holding the gloriously designed Going Over galleys in my hand for the first time, hugging dear Tamra Tuller, meeting that incredibly vivacious publicist Lara Starr in person (oh, yeah!), sitting down with the wonderful Ginee Seo, Stephanie Wong, and Amber Morley of Chronicle, and sharing a meal with local librarians and booksellers. Finally, I'll have a chance to spend some real time with Wendy Robards, whom many of you know as Caribousmom. Wendy's Small Damages quilt sits before me as I write these words. It is here as inspiration.



The days will be jam-packed. I'm looking forward to every second.



In the meantime, today, I share this essay, written for The Millions , about memoirists who glance up from the page and recognize their readers—and those who do not. I feel privileged to be given room on that amazing book site.



Also, finally, beautifully, I share this Bookslut column, by Colleen Mondor, who took the time to read and to write about Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. All of you know how much this book means to me. It makes me so happy, therefore, that Colleen embraced it.What's more, she embraced it in a column called "Living in a Springsteen Song" (could you get any closer to my heart?) and likens it to "Copper," one of her favorite TV shows.



To more sun. To more breeze. To endless Springsteen.

A Seahorse Year/Stacey D'Erasmo: Reflections

One hour before I was scheduled to meet Stacey D'Erasmo in a hotel lobby, I took a walk through the residential streets of Decatur, GA. There, near the local library, stood this magnificent magnolia tree, bent but not broken, mature but incredibly alive, shadowy and cool except for that break of sun. It was, I thought, like the novel I'd just read, the complex and complexly brilliant A Seahorse Year. 



No doubt every D'Erasmo novel is as rich as this one is—as thoroughly considered, as masterfully developed. I chose A Seahorse Year because it has two teens at its interwoven heart and because it is ultimately about the repercussive impact of one on many. A child gets sick and: His biological parents (Nan and Hal) are stricken. His step-parent (Marina, Nan's lover) finds herself on the margins, and straying. His Dad's new lover (Dan) is not sure he wants to be absorbed into such a broken family. The boy's girlfriend (Tamara) believes (with all the assurance of youth) that she can be a saviour. Tamara's parents are furious, spiteful. Nan's brother does the wrong thing. Everyone separated by degrees. Every catastrophic turn sparking seismic implications. Every nuance nuanced. And somehow Stacey D'Erasmo keeps track of it all. Produces a novel about relationships, which is also a novel of suspense. Writes with such intimate knowledge of her characters and their worlds that it is no wonder that Graywolf Press chose her to write The Art of Intimacy, the book Stacey and I had come to the magical Decatur Book Festival to discuss.



It takes about four years, Stacey told me, to write each of her novels. It is time enormously well spent. She invests deeply in her characters. Knows every detail of their rooms and their souls, the roads they walk on, the paths they walk, the fights they're not having, the words they hoard. She knows the mistakes they make, which are the mistakes we make. She is patient. She allows her stories to evolve. I bookmarked so many passages in A Seahorse Year that I am hard pressed to choose a single one. Because I must choose, I will choose this one, below—proof of what the right details do to illuminate character. Here we see Nan's house as Marina sees Nan's house. We are given the space, we are given two characters. We are given a story:

Flitting through Nan's house, Marina felt like a bird that had flown in and couldn't find her way out. Nan's house, like her bedroom, was slightly underfurnished, not austere so much as elementary, in the way of someone who would think with satisfaction: well, this is everything we need. The only extravagance was in the living room, where more than a few new, lavish books were stacked on the mantel. A thick biography of Madame Tussaud. An entire set of Proust with silvery corners. Otherwise, the house was like a collection of simple verbs: eating, sitting, watching TV. A red, child-size hooded sweatshirt was crumpled against the arm of the sofa. A few little robot men slept, still locked in combat, on the coffee table. Several plastic trucks were suspended in a convoy into the dining room. Standing half-wrapped in the damp towel, Marina's feet were cool on the cool floor. She stood there looking for something, but she didn't know what. Evidence—though the extravagant books weren't it—of some intractable bitterness, strained rope tethered to rusted stake, some wormhole that would end this thing before it had properly begun. She didn't want another complicated wife. Nan, the night before, had been very quiet and determined, like someone building something. Marina thought warily, Why?

My conversation with Stacey D'Erasmo at the AJC Decatur Book Festival will always be a life highlight (a photo here). Stacey's book on intimacy is not to be missed, my thoughts about that here. And look for Stacey's new novel, Wonderland, out next May. It's about an aging rock star, she says, and Stacey went on tour to get the details right. I cannot wait to see what she saw, and how she transformed it all to fiction.

Tomie dePaola, Stacey D'Erasmo, Jessica Shoffel, Doni Kay, Little Shop, Decatur: Best Book Festival Ever

I left the house at 4:30 AM on Friday morning and arrived at the Courtyard Marriott of Decatur, GA, six or so hours later. As if elves had been working behind the scenes, there stood Jessica Shoffel, the Philomel publicist about whom I so often gush, Doni Kay, a tremendous Philomel sales associate who was a huge supporter of Small Damages, and Gennifer Choldenko, the Newbery Honor winner. Three gorgeous women, just standing there. The start of something great.



I was there on behalf of Handling the Truth, but Jess and Doni immediately took me under their wings, walking the town with me, sitting down at lunch with me, and finding, with me, a copy of Small Damages in the window of The Little Shop of Stories. We stepped inside this amazing store, and at once I was embraced by the shopkeepers, who had been warned of my coming by no other than Judy Schachner, whose image graces the wall of the Philadelphia International Airport (I had snapped the picture at dawn that morning) and whose beauty I was just writing about the other day. They had been told, by Judy, to take good care of me, and oh did they. They were like family, from the start. Diane Capriola (shown above with her daughter, watching Tomie draw), you run an exquisite enterprise. Thank you for your graciousness toward me.



I went off on my day. Heard Clyde Edgerton, that southern raconteur, speak about his writing life. Conducted a memoir workshop on the Agnes Scott campus with an incredible group of writers. Found a text from Jess inviting me to spend the evening with the Penguin crowd—and I did. Walked up the stairs at The Little Shop of Stories and met none other than Tomie dePaola, whose books I had collected through the years and read to my son—perennial favorites. He was drawing an image for The Little Shop. He was telling stories, signing his new book. And then we went off to dinner, a handful of us, to hear more about Tomie's life in mid-century America. DJ MacHale was in the house—the uber bestseller of the Pendragon series, author of the newly released Sylo (the critics say no one does suspense like MacHale does suspense), and a complete class act. So was Nancy Krulik, another children's book star with a massive following. I wasn't really sure what I was doing there among the super stars of the children's book world, but I allowed myself the happiness.



Back in my room I prepared for the day to come—a conversation I have long anticipated with Stacey D'Erasmo. Someday soon I will write here about her brilliant (!) novel, A Seahorse Year. I have already written about her super smart writing book, The Art of Intimacy and I will be the first in line when her new novel debuts next May. I cannot tell you what a privilege it was to spend an hour with Stacey before our talk, to walk to the Courthouse stage at her side, and finally to sit in a beautiful room to talk about uncertainty, memoir, intimacy, process. What a crowd we had. What a day it was.



I'm back home now. In a few days I'll leave for San Francisco. Will see my dear editor Tamra Tuller and the Chronicle team, then plunge into all kinds of Handling loveliness.



I plan to spend today watching movies. But right now, this minute, I want to thank all the people who made Decatur so fantastic. I'll never forget it. It's one hell of a town. Beth Parker and Gina Chung, of Gotham, thank you for making my trip there possible.

Decatur Festival Bound, and a conversation with the agent, Andy Ross

Whenever I mention the AJC Decatur Book Festival to those who have visited in the past, I get a single reaction: love; people love this festival. There will be more than 300 authors in attendance, including a few of my friends. The conversations, I'm told, verge on the electrifying. And oh the street fair.


And so, in less than 12 hours, I'll face a classroom of 30 aspiring memoir writers, spin a few songs on a CD, and get us going. Tomorrow I'll sit on a stage with Stacey D'Erasmo, a writer and critic whose work is remarkable, and discuss intimacy and memoir. Read A Seahorse Year and The Art of Intimacy and every single one of her NYTBR reviews if you haven't encountered D'Erasmo yet.



But right now, I leave you with this—a conversation I had with the agent Andy Ross, who generously read Handling the Truth and had a number of questions. I had a blast with this, and it's always interesting to hear an agent's perspective on a form I love. Thank you so much, Andy Ross, and congratulations on the memoir you just sold.



Signing out for now.....