Beth Kephart's Blog, page 148

when asked to speak of life-changing books, teens named just two books written for teens

I asked my YoungArts students to tell me about books that changed their idea of language and story.  Of the dozens of books celebrated and assessed, just two were books published (at least in this country) for teens.



I wonder if you can guess which two they were.



Upping the ante:  The first person to guess correctly and leaves that guess in a comment here, will win a copy of Small Damages.  Why not?  I'm in the book giveaway mood.

and the winner of Magical Journey is ...

Melodye Shore!



I know that you want to know how this winner was selected for my contest, sponsored a few days ago.  I will share that secret here.  With more than 500 people clicking on this giveaway post and more than 30 entering to win, with my own blog utterly unaccustomed to throwing book giveaways, I called in my arsenal, which is to say my husband, and asked him a question.



Choose a number, I said.



Why? he asked



You will be selecting a winner, I said.



A winner!  Well.  He gave it great thought.  He closed his eyes.  He chose his quantifier.



Melodye won, I said.



I want some credit for that, he said.



Credit is given.  A challenge is won.



All of you who so kindly took interest here, thank you for your responses and contentment.  I know you will love Katrina's book, however it enters your life.

this vulnerability thing. it's always. it's truest. read George Saunders.

Joel Lovell has written a hell of a good piece about George Saunders in the The New York Times, and if I don't summarize it here, chances tick up that you'll go read it for yourself.  So I'm offering nothing more than this:  The piece is infused with the message I have long shared, the truth that I will forever stand by.  Remain vulnerable.


Here is Saunders reflecting on a nearly tragic airplane ride, or one that felt tragic at the time.  The plane he had been flying in had hit a flock of geese.  The cabin turned black.  The inevitable was upon him and those who traveled with.  Then he was safe.

"For three or four days after that," he said, "it was the most beautiful world.  To have gotten back in it, you know?  And I actually thought, If you could walk around like that all the time, to really have that awareness that it's actually going to end.  That's the trick."

We won't have this life for always.  Crack open your ribs.  Let life in.

I Wanted: An Old Poem Revised for the New Year

I
Wanted




I wanted the whole moon

white where it is, blue how it
falls.




I wanted the earth,

collapsing and folding.




I wanted the ocean to rise

and unberth us.




I wanted the loudest thing

in the morning light

to be my heart,

still beating. 




The short break

in a long poem.




The glass to stop

breaking.




Trespass.

One week from today I'll be in Miami

with the 24 young writers who have kept me company through these winter days with their wild and teach-worthy responses to three prompts I'd sent out just before Christmas on behalf of the National YoungArts Foundation.  The young writers will be in Miami starting Sunday; their workshops will begin the next day.   By the time I arrive on Wednesday night there will be a lit revolution stirring.



I want to be there for the revolution.

thoughts on the new year: the bounty of friendship, the dearness of Caribousmom

We celebrated New Years Eve with truly beloved friends, as we now do each year.  We choose a restaurant halfway between our homes, in a town called Skippack.  We talk students, dance, Hollywood, art, travels, books, life as it is and was.



The bounty of friendship.



In so many ways the year now gone terrified those of us who love this country and care about the rising class of dreamers.  I am vulnerable and incapable, often.  I have not learned what I can do in the face of national and personal tragedies, congressional cacophony and faulty machines.  I have lost my faith in the sanctity of theaters and classrooms.  I have worried about weather.  I have felt sickened by conversations that stopped far short of anybody actually listening.



I have wanted to make room.  I have asked myself how.  I have asked myself questions.



Why are we screaming so much at one another?  What is the payoff of cruelty?  How can we push a man into the path of an oncoming train?  How can we survive the gunning down of children, of teachers, of people watching Batman?  What can we do for the friend who has lost a brother far too soon?  What can we say when illness happens, and when it returns, when jobs are lost, when everything is so preposterously uncertain, when the storms sweep in?  When we don't know and we need to know?  When there are people relying on us?



We can, I think, be kinder to one another.  We can be more trustworthy.  Less self-indulgent with our anger or our needs.  Less quick to correct or accuse, humiliate or shame.  More aware of the connections between people and things, and how easily—pushed too far, intruded upon—they're broken.  We can surround ourselves with the bounty of friendship, and it is this bounty, and the love in my own family, that sustains me, that shows me how.  It is this bounty that I am particularly grateful for, on this first day of this new year. 



Earlier this year, Wendy Robards, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a caretaker, one of the smartest readers of books anywhere, a quilter, read an early copy of Small Damages and began to make a quilt that captured the colors in the story.  When it arrived I was astonished.  Since it arrived, I have shown it to every single person who comes, sometimes I show them twice.  It is symbolic, this quilt—bright, particular, personal, and made and given out of love.



Today Wendy has posted her favorite books of the year, and, Wendy being Wendy, first provides incredible reviews of a truly stellar collection, then finally names Small Damages as her favorite read of the year.



A tree grows for you in my heart, Wendy.



Love to all of you in 2013.

the first gift of your new year: a chance to win Katrina Kenison's Magical Journey

I have spent much of this snowy, white weekend with my dear friend Katrina Kenison, who may live among mountains and wild flowers north of here, but who has a way of writing that extends her voice and touch straight out of terrestrial geography.  She is gentle with you.  She is fierce with herself.  She wants to live a full, complete life—not losing all she's loved, not forfeiting the present hour.  Introverted, she thinks.  Gracious, she extends. 



Katrina has a new book now, a memoir, called Magical Journey:  An Apprenticeship in Contentment.  On this last day of 2012, and for a few days tripping into 2013, you have a chance to win a copy.



You know how much I love Katrina, for just a few days ago I wrote about her here.  I shared, as well, the film she's made that suggests the themes in her new book.  But let me do something more to entice you.  Let me quote from this book about needing, wanting, failing, righting, this book so tender, forthright, and honest that, even if you cannot find a silent place to read, all the voices that tangle in your head will, in Katrina's company, be silenced.  Katrina is writing about herself, but she is, as all memoirists must, also writing about women like her, women who have raised children and who are asking, quietly or chorally, What next?  What is my purpose here?  "Now I'm coming to believe," Katrina writes:

that there is room in the world for all our stories, not only the heroic narratives of extraordinary people who inspire us with their accomplishments, but also simple stories of ordinary struggles.  I suspect that every mother, no matter what her circumstances, muddles her way through the intricate dance of holding on and letting go; that no parent ever feels they get it exactly right; and that though our stories may look different on the surface, they are in many ways the same—about lives that feel as confusing and exhilarating, as mundane and precious, as imperfect and blessed as my own.  

What do you believe?  And how might Katrina's journey mirror or magnify your own?  If you want a chance to win a copy of this book, all you have to do is put a comment here, naming one single thing in which you find quiet contentment.   You have until January 4th.  And then we'll pull a name from the virtual hat.

Small Damages a top five read of the year, with thanks again to A. A. Omer

I spent part of this day in the cold, white weather, by my mother's grave.  I spent part of it watching the news, wondering about the state this country is in.  I spent part of it reading the still incoming essays by the two dozen YoungArts writers I'll meet in Miami in just a few days and part of it receding into that safe hollow where story still lives within me, if I listen hard, if I wait.



I came to this computer just now to see what a handful of these new Florence paragraphs look like on this big screen, because I will never believe in the sentences I make until I see them and remake them and endlessly reshape them until they are set, a tableau vivant.  When I arrived, this bit of thrilling something was right here, waiting for me:



A.A. Omer, who just hours ago named Small Damages number one within the Best Writing of 2012 category, has today named this book of mine to her top five reads of the year.  Here, on this list, it joins Gone Girl, Drowning Instinct, Pandemonium, and Blood Red Road.



I have no idea how I got this lucky, but I hope you don't mind if I directly quote:

2) Small Damages by Beth Kephart

Every paragraph, sentence and word was important and a story that
could’ve been dull was made captivating. Werewolves, vampires, dystopian
worlds are fun but sometimes it’s everyday life and everyday problems
that’s the most interesting.

A.A. Omer, I need to throw you a party.  A very happy new year to you!

remembering my mother in life, six years after her passing

We remember our mother's love and her many talents, her considerable capacity for beauty, her insatiable curiosity, her jitterbug tales.  In her memory today, I post long-ago photographs.  My mother, younger sister, and me.  My older brother during his first month of life.



Finally, my mother was a writer, too, and as part of her memorial service, I created a small book of her words.  She's there on the left, in one of my final portraits of her.  She's there on the right, as the dark-haired beauty in a summer picnic with her brother, mother, and father.



We love you and we miss you, Mom.

Christmas weather, holiday kindness, and thank you, A. A. Omer

I made my way to Body Combat early this morning.  The snow began to fall just as I left.  I allow myself to be lazy after workouts like that.  To lie on a couch and dream a novel forward. 


I write so slowly now.  But I never mind the time I make to dream a novel forward.



In between I read the astonishing work being sent to me by the YoungArts writers; our literary future, ladies and gentlemen, is in excellent hands.  I read, as well, Katrina Kenison's glorious new book, Magical Journey, of which I wrote not long ago.  Look for a chance to win your own copy here, on New Year's Day.  All you'll need to do is tell me what makes you quietly glad, and your name will be put into the hat.



Finally, I discovered, thanks to a little white-winged bird, that A.A. Omer, a reader of discerning tastes (in my humble opinion), placed Small Damages number one in her five-book list of the year's best writing.  It joins the work of David Levithan, Moira Young, Ilsa Bick, and Wynne Channing.  It is an act of greatest kindness.  Thank you.