Beth Kephart's Blog, page 150

Paul Elie on Faith in Fiction

In 2004, I led the PEN/Martha Albrand Award jury for First Nonfiction—a responsibility that filled my home with books both large and small, historical and personal.  I read about presidents and war.  I read about tattoos.  I read about doctors under siege.  I read about landscapes.  I shared my thoughts with four other jury members and ultimately traveled to Lincoln Center in New York City to introduce our winner, Paul Elie, whose The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage had won us all over.  At the ceremony, I put our affection for his work this way:

Ingeniously conceived and elegantly crafted, Paul Elie’s The Life You Save May Be Your Own shines
an amber light on four twentieth-century Catholic storytellers who dared to
believe in the power of literature and in the ultimate integrity of
readers.  Choosing to focus on the
lives and works of Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Dorothy
Day, Elie deftly moves among his illustrious characters —reflecting on influences,
unveiling connections, tying one to the other in often unexpected ways. Elie transitions
between the personal and the political, the literary and the lived, with
enviable ease.  Most of all, he
does supreme justice to his subjects with vivid, lithe, and never once
pretentious prose.

I've been watching Elie's career unfold ever since—grateful for his continuing presence as a mold breaker and deep thinker.  This weekend, Elie has a long essay in The New York Times Book Review titled "Has Fiction Lost Its Faith?" If you have time on this holiday weekend, take a careful look.

holiday near

This holiday season I feel the urgent need to pull those whom I love even closer.  The world is fragile.  There are storms.  There is rampage.  There is the stagger afterwards.  All we have is who we have, and I feel better when my own are standing near.

Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment/Katrina Kenison: the video you must watch now

Katrina Kenison's name is, I'm sure, well known to you all.  As an editor she brought important books into the world and spent many years binding together each year's most essential works of short fiction in Best American Short Stories.  As a writer she has been inspired by her children, her neighbors, her urgent dreams of peaceful, meaningful living to craft books that have found countless readers—immediately upon publication and consistently throughout the years.  As a blogger she inspires and makes whole legions of seekers.  As a force for good she has been interviewed in the New York Times or written for the Huffington Post and other major news outlets.  As my long-time friend, she has listened, coaxed, assured, read, remembered, and, even while under all manner of personal pressure, written words that help me understand my own books better.  She is a letter writer and a prose poemer.  A practitioner of yoga and a cook.  She has a really adorable dog. And when the world shatters, as the world has lately shattered, Katrina is the companion and friend you turn to for binding wisdom.



While the rest of us wish we knew how to make book trailers that were far bigger and better than book trailers, Katrina has gone ahead and blazed a significantly different kind of path by making videos about books that also stand alone as life lessons.  Just look at this trailer for The Gift of an Ordinary Day .  More than 1.6 million other people already have.



This morning I am  proud and happy to share Katrina's newest work of video art, which, among other things, introduces her new book, due out in January, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment.



"Love," Katrina writes in its pages, "is the answer to your most urgent question: What am I really" here to do?"



"You have work to do," she urges.  "Begin it."



Katrina worked intently on her new book.  She thought a lot about how to tell its story with audio and film.  She conceived of and posed for the book's cover.  I'm not the only one who believes Magical Journey will soar.  Here, for example, is Publishers Weekly:

In this intensely moving tribute to the importance of enjoying every
moment of life, Kenison (The Gift of An Ordinary Day), former longtime
series editor of The Best American Short Stories, tells a tale inspired
by loss and confides what can be gained from it. After a dear friend
dies from cancer and her two sons head off to boarding school and
college, Kenison is forced to question what remains relevant in her life
and how such an introspective examination might portend a change in
priorities. Identifying a common and paralyzing fear (“I am so used to
doubting my worthiness that the minute I decide to do something, I start
convincing myself I’m not up to the job”), she turns to intensive yoga
studies, where she learns that “the best antidote to anxiety about the
future is to be present in the here and now,” and that finding
contentment in what one is rather than what one thinks one should be is
critical. Her journey will inspire tears and determination, and remind
readers that anything, “done from the heart, changes the world in some
small way for the better.” Agent: Steven Lewers. (Jan.)

Handling the Truth: Katrina Kenison's kindness and first words

Tomorrow morning I am going to share a video here that will quiet you, inspire you, make you want to know my friend, Katrina Kenison.



But this afternoon I am privileged to share Katrina's words about Handling the Truth.  She received this book and read it at once.  She sent me notes as I stood near my great-grandfather's grave in Bryson City, North Carolina, and then notes again, through a dark week.  And even in the midst of all she is doing in preparation for the launch of her own book, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment (look for it!), she took time to craft these words.



They are the first "official" words for this book:

With infectious passion and hard-won wisdom, Beth Kephart eloquently celebrates the rigors and rewards of the creative process and – equally necessary – the art of crafting a meaningful life.  Part memoir and part memoirist’s manifesto, this small, urgent book inspires on many levels.  Read it and learn how to tell your story.  Better yet, read it and begin to understand why your story matters.



Katrina Kenison, author of Magical Journey:  An Apprenticeship in Contentment

For the full press release, go here.

It's Fine By Me/Per Petterson: Reflections

When I am asked what author I recommend to thoughtful teen readers of the male persuasion, I don't blink.  Per Petterson, I say.  It doesn't get much better, in general, than a Per Petterson book.  And with his often adolescent male protagonists, his compelling Norwegian landscapes, his deliberate lonesomeness, his inclination to tell the truth about how growing up feels, Petterson speaks especially well to young, literary-minded male readers.



Out Stealing Horses ranks as one of my favorite novels of all time.  It's Fine By Me, Petterson's newest (translated by Don Bartlett) is equally strong—a coming-of-age tale about a working-class teen who won't remove his sunglasses when he steps into his new school and doesn't want the world to know, well, anything at all about him.  Audun Sletten stands on the outside, brooding.  He wrestles with his own story (a drunken father, a dead brother, a sister he loves, a girl he might like) discontinuously.  He makes a friend despite himself, yields a little because he has to, wants to protect his family but sometimes anger is all he has, all he is.  Anger and the Norwegian landscape, the white winters, the bracing lakes, the one or two teachers who notice, the men at the printing plant where he ultimately works, that best friend again—wry and helpful. 



The world recedes when I read Petterson.  I find his intelligence essential.  I talk about crossover books—YA to A.  But may the tide reverse and may Petterson's work cross into high school classrooms and become standard reading fare not just for adults but for teens.



A passage:

And I don't see any animals, but long Lake Elvaga is glittering in the sunshine.  About halfway, I stop and slide down and sit on the slope by the bank.  It is fine and open here, and the trees are naked.  I take out the roll-up and a little notebook I like to think is similar to the one that Hemingway used in the Twenties in his Paris book, A Moveable Feast.  I light the cigarette and try to do what he did:  write one true sentence.  I try several, but they don't amount to any more than what Arvid calls purple prose.  I give it another go, and I try to get down on the paper the expression on Dole's face when I dragged him by the leg across the floor of Geir's bar.  It's better, but not very good.

Looking ahead to YoungArts in Miami, welcoming my students

This year the National YoungArts Foundation received some 10,000 applications for its extraordinary program celebrating emerging artists in the visual, literary, and performing arts fields.  The teen finalists—152 of them—are now just a few weeks away from participating in YoungArts Week in Miami, a program designed to celebrate their talents, to extend their reach, and to engage them in conversation and exercises that will hopefully shape their way of seeing and doing for years to come.



As the Master Teacher for the 24 young writers who were selected for the program (writing being just one of nine celebrated disciplines), I am blessed.  I'll be teaching in the city's botanical gardens.  I'll be asking the students to come prepared with a brief autobiography of their hair, a declaration about the books that have changed their perception of both story and language, and a photograph of themselves that firmly divides a Before from an After.  We'll explore the garden in search of telling details, weatherscapes, and invisible, essential forces.  We will write bird song and water rush.  We will assimilate and empathize.



I am eager to meet the young writers. I am eager to learn from the program's other master teachers and presenters—Marisa Tomei, Bobby McFerrin, Bill T. Jones, Debbie Allen, Joshua Bell, and Adrian Grenier, among others.  I am eager to spend some time in Miami.



But first things first.  Today I officially welcome my students, who will be arriving from San Francisco, Birmingham, Holladay, Boonton, and all manner of places in between.


Congratulations, and welcome:




Alexa Derman

Julia Hogan

Flannery James

Libbie Katsev

Lois Carlisle

Allison Cooke

Stefania Gomez

Peter Laberge

Amy Mattox

Kathleen Radigan

Laura Rashley

Lila Thulin

Victoria White

Catherine Wong

Kathleen Cole

Amanda Crist

Emily Hittner-Cunningham

Anne Hucks

Natalie Landers

Annyston Pennington

Anne Malin Ringwalt

Lizza Rodriguez

Frances Saux

Ashley Zhou

Differences Magazine kindly blesses Small Damages

Today, my thanks go out to Gina Lewis, who truly blesses Small Damages in Differences Magazine with this review.  My thanks, too, to Serena, for letting me know.



Gina writes of her wish that Small Damages would "continue on further."  Gina, if you are reading this, know that an entire sequel lives in my mind—that these characters are still living, dreaming, and remembering under the heat of southern Spain.  A baby has been born.  A new adventure simmers.

Michael G.G. Jennifer Brown

We woke to a deep mist here, a roiling fog.  It seems the skies understand, that they, like us, are weeping. 



It will be difficult for any of us to move forward.  To stop putting our imaginations elsewhere, and grieving.  And maybe that's okay.  Maybe we do just need to stop.



On this necessarily quiet day, I want to thank two extremely generous people for kindness—an attribute more important to me than any other.  The first is Michael G-G, always a smart writer and blogger, always a dear soul, who read two of my books at the same time and had this to say.  Michael understands my relationship to the color blue.  His words on this and on so much more touched me so deeply—and arise out of the mist.


The second is Jennifer Brown, a former school teacher and now the woman I love to call (because it is so true) "the ambassador for children's books."  She was a terrific panel moderator at the Publishing Perspectives conference held a few weeks ago, just after the storm Sandy stopped us all in our tracks.  She reports on the conference today in Shelf Awareness in the meaningful way that she does all things.



Love, and (somehow) healing.

Empty/K.M. Walton: Reflections

It was particularly difficult—and yet so important and poignant—to read K.M. Walton's second novel, Empty, late last night and into this early morning.  Kate is a friend of mine, a deep-thinking, big-hearted former school teacher who has devoted her novelistic life (so far) to making visible the too-often invisible lives of young people who have either been bullied or succumbed to the tease of hurting others.  In a recent, moving TEDx talk, Kate took us back into her teaching days and shared her effective cure for getting kids to stop hurting other kids.  It's mandatory watching.



With Empty, Kate focuses on Adele, 17 years old and massively overweight, a former softball star whose size now makes it difficult to play.  Her father has left the family.  Her mother, working two jobs and addicted to prescription pills, has moved Adele and her baby sister into inadequate, cramped quarters.  Adele's only friend doesn't even truly know Adele, and sometimes, for comfort, Adele will pour a box of cereal into a large mixing bowl and eat every single bite.  And things will only get worse.



One wants to believe (to hope) that no child is this alone, or in this much pain, but the news tells us differently.  The news reminds us of how frightening alone-ness is, and of what its consequences can be.  Empty is a brave book written by a brave writer—relentless, unblinking, harrowing.  We read it to know.  We read it disabuse ourselves of the easy notion that those young people floating on the margins will be just fine without us, that they somehow don't need our attention or care.



They are not fine without us.



They need our care.



I received an early copy of Empty from Kate.  Join her for her book launch on January 5, 2013 at the Barnes and Noble in Exton, PA, 7 PM to 9 PM.  I, most certainly, will be there.

Between Heaven and Here/Susan Straight: Reflections

For many weeks I had looked toward this weekend as a time to read some of the many books that have come to me from friends, or that I bought myself.  In the wake of Friday's news, I have, like you, been paralyzed.  There simply are no words.  There is less goodness in the world.



I don't know how any of us move forward—how we leave those suffering behind in our thoughts.  I was grateful for church this morning.  I was grateful for the dark mist of sad weather, for sun would not have been right today.



The book that I have managed to carry with me through this weekend is Between Heaven and Here, bought from a New and Noteworthy shelf at a nearby bookstore back in October, by my long-time friend Susan Straight, who has won countless awards and prizes—deservedly.  She lives in and is inspired by her own Riverside, CA.  Since the very start of what is now a stunning novel career, she has looked toward what most of us cannot see—the lives of those imperiled by gangs, crack, meth, poverty, injustice, prejudice, and bittersweet (but mostly bitter) histories. 


Between Heaven and Here is part of a trilogy framed by A Million Nightingales and Take One Candle Light a Room.  It is a small book with a large cast.  It sweeps back and forth over many years and two states, and through horrific crimes present and past.  It centers on the death of Glorette Picard, a beautiful streetwalker and crack addict whose son, Victor, studies SAT words and is determined to forge a path out of a proud but battered lineage.  Faulkner-like, it circles Glorette's burial—nearly impossible given the hard sheen of a sun-dried earth.



Susan has always written sentences that crackle and steam.  She has fabricated characters whose talk is so real and whose conditions are so palpable that we are sure that Susan herself has sat among them, genuine and listening.



In this novel—a novel of assembled parts, of intersecting stories, of clocks moved ahead and moved backward, then stopped—Susan's sentences stunned me at most every turn.  Here are just a few of them.  Here's what Susan Straight can do with an image:

Gustave touched her collarbone.  The knob of bone where it had healed, after she'd broken it falling from an orange tree.  He couldn't touch her hair.  When she was fourteen, the flesh of her body had rearranged itself, and her eyes had grown watchful under the fur of eyebrows and eyelashes.  Her hair had come out of the braids his wife made every morning, and she had coated her eyelashes with crankcase oil and painted her lips, and disappeared into her room.  The fear of her beauty wound its way through his entrails.

The Santa Ana was so shallow and clear that he waded across it, kept on through the sandy earth past the river, the willows that smelled medicinal, and came to the eucalyptus windbreak all along the citrus.  

"Whatever," the boy said.  Felonise let herself look at him.  Reddish-brown hair in shiny spikes, like a wet cat sat on his skull.