Beth Kephart's Blog, page 157

in which I reunite with loved students at Penn and share thoughts about truth with Cindy Kaplan, James Martin, and John Prendergast

The images above capture a happy late afternoon at the Kelly Writers House of the University of Pennsylvania, where I engaged with colleagues, students, and memoirists in a conversation about memoir and read, for the first time, from Handling the Truth.  To John Prendergast, our fearless moderator, to Cindy Kaplan (gigantically funny), to Jim Martin (deeply moving), to Al Filreis (who created and perpetuates this homey Writers House), to Jessica Lowenthal (who leads), and to my students Liz (not pictured here), Andrea, Katie, Beryl, and Nabil:  thank you.  The day will always be fondly remembered.

we wait for the storm, we hunker down,

we pray for trees to stand tall, for safety for friends, for love in the dark pell mell of it all.



I am off to the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House to see my students and my friends, and to read, for the first official time, from Handling the Truth.



As I leave, I tuck forty-four pages of my new Florentine novel into a safe, dry place.  

the power of our students—and the alumni memoir panel, at Penn

Tomorrow I'll be at my alma mater and spring employer, the University of Pennsylvania, joining in on the alumni memoir panel being hosted by Kelly Writers House for homecoming weekend.  I'll be reading from Handling the Truth (Gotham) and talking about the prickly enterprise of truth telling.  I'll be answering questions.  But what is making this already wonderful opportunity even sweeter is that I'll be seeing some of my past students.



This morning, for example, I woke to a glorious long email from Katie, who brought such golden light to the classroom this past spring and who emerged, during those Tuesday afternoons, as a real writer.  If you're lucky someday, you'll meet this Katie of mine (of ours), whose email included the news that she has been accepted into top-choice medical programs.  Katie is spending her gap year at a health ministry in a city that needs hearts and minds like hers.  In the off hours (though it sounds as if there are no off hours), she is enrolled in photography classes at an art school.  Katie has stories to tell, things to share, and this weekend she's returning to Penn, and if I'm lucky, I'll get to stand in her shimmering light for a while.



Nabil Mehta will be there, too, that engineering student and child actor whose highly poetic work enthralled us and whose essay appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette not long ago.  And perhaps Liz, supremely wonderful Liz, on her way from the west coast to the east.  And among those who may join us that afternoon is my just-named spring semester apprentice, Alice, who will be working with me as my Florence novel unfolds—conducting research, interviewing doctors, discovering how fact becomes story.



We adjunct teachers out here teach because of the doors that open when we do.  We teach because our students keep us young, and keep us whole.  This morning, when telling my husband of Katie's news, tears fell.  When I read Nabil's essay in the Gazette, or Joe Polin's Gazette essay before that, when I saw Rachel dance in Red Dot Dreaming, when my Kim celebrated her engagement, when my Moira got married, when Jonathan challenges me (with a smile), when the letters from galentines and searchers and doers enter in, joy breaks through.



That's the power of our students over us.

If you are going to insist on writing so many books, then

change the way you write them. 



I choose a new chair.  I write with a new tool.  I redesign the hour in the day.  I slow it down.



I see what all this does to story.

Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent arrives (as galley pages)

It's been quite a week here, as proof pages for both Handling the Truth and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent arrive.  Over the next few days I'll turn my attention to the second, my 1871 prequel to Dangerous Neighbors, which features Eastern State Penitentiary, Baldwin Locomotive Works, Schuylkill River races, George Childs, a famous murder, and a boy named William who rescues animals for a living.



This book also features illustrations by William Sulit and a book design by Elizabeth Parks (and copy editing by my blogger friend Quinn Colter).  It will be released this coming March from New City Community Press/Temple University.

remembering Mike Ruhl, celebrating the good

Earlier this week I took a walk with my little point and shoot to document my neighborhood for a friend.  This is my house, this is my street, this is my church, this is my office, I said.  And I loved the sound of each camera snap.



So that this, yes, is my church, my own St. John's, and this is where, earlier today, we came together to remember the life of Mike Ruhl, a man described by all who knew him as extraordinarily good.  Good being a big word.  Good being the biggest word.  Good being how we think of those who actively listen and overtly care, those who want the right things and work on their behalf, those who love their families, those who leave us with grace, those who purify us by their presence.  Mike Ruhl was all those things, and by his wife and son, by his sister and mother, niece and nephews, by his co-workers, by his friends, he will be forever missed.  His spirit is still out there, on this blue-sky day.  But oh, he will be missed.



After the service, those who had joined together—seamlessly, under the leadership of a compassionate minister and with the guidance of Lisa, Mike's wife—stood on the church lawn and in the parking lot.  I stood too, and took it in.  I thought of all the easy rancor in the world, the shots fired, the punches thrown, the lines that get crossed.  I thought of those who confuse cruelty with wit, those who seize upon someone or something with one objective only—to trump, for a nano-instant, to gain nattering fame at another's expense.  I thought of politics, and what it does to us.  Anonymous comments.  Spiced Twitter feeds.  Failed apologies.



But there is, in goodness, beauty.  There is, in kindness, intelligence.  There are people like Mike Ruhl who crowd a church on a blue-sky day to be celebrated, to be remembered, to instruct us.



I turn my eyes in that direction.

Dancers Among Us: All I Need Today

Dancers Among Us goes around the USA in Ninety Seconds from Jordan Matter on Vimeo.

(first seen on Shelf Awareness)

Ask the Passengers: Launch Day for My Friend A.S. King

There's only one thing to do with my ole blog today, and that is to wrap my internet arms around my friend A.S. King, whose Ask the Passengers launches today.  I'm going to get my own copy at Amy's Children's Book World (Haverford, PA) event, one long week from today, October 30. But I know Amy, and I have read her books, and I therefore already know how grand this book will be.



Read about this multiply starred book here.  Order yourself a copy.



Amy, I'm sending you love.



Astrid is a typical teenager - -her family is dysfunctional, her "perfect couple" best friends are deceiving the entire school, and she's secretly crushing on a girl at work. She's got so much love and nowhere to give it, so she sends it into the sky, to the passengers of planes flying overhead. When Astrid's life suddenly begins to collapse, she has to find a way to change it--and she might just change the passengers' lives, as well.

ballroom dancing in a spectral palace

Less than a week from now, I will be dancing a tango/rumba, all attitudes of Cher, to "Welcome to Burlesque."   I will be partnered by my husband of so many years.  I will dance in my own alma mater high school, my Hall of Fame plaque shaking on the auditorium's exterior wall, as it wonders what has become of my dignity.  I will be transformed!  Electrifying!  Snatch-worthy!  I will not trip! (maybe!)  I will not forget!  (perhaps!) I will.......move!



(With all these exclamation marks I am beginning to remind myself of Tom Wolfe!)



In the meantime, I watch videos like this, discovered by DanceSport's own Tirsa Rivas (who actually is a star).



I think:  If only I had two more weeks of practice.  

Jessica Francis Kane does it again with This Close: Stories

I met Jessica Francis Kane a few months after the publication of her electrifying novel, The Report.  She was in town, having a book conversation.  We had a chance to talk.  We've stayed in touch and not long ago the galleys of hew new book, This Close: Stories (Graywolf, March 2013), arrived by mail.  I was ecstatic.



I read the first four of these dozen stories while on the train home from New York City this past Saturday night. There is, perhaps, no better reading zone—a dark night, a quiet train, the lull of forward motion. Jessica's stories do what excellent short stories must; they involve their readers at once.  They settle in as if the characters were always there, as if you have always been privy to their secrets, their flaws.  "Lucky Boy" is, at first, matter of fact:  "Something about New York City makes a lot of people understand you should try to look your best.  Tourists, for example, often wear brand-new shoes and socks."  Hmmm, you think, why this as a place to start not just a story but a collection, and then it's clear:  There is something deep and soul-agitating at work right here, something profound being telegraphed about relationships between those paid to take care and those who pay, about innocence and dependence.



Time is brilliantly managed in "Lucky Boy."  Things happen at a rapid clip and yet we never feel breathless, never feel excluded from the months and years in between scenes, when a friend becomes a girlfriend becomes a wife becomes a slate of opinions our narrator isn't quite sure he buys.  It's quite a trick.  No, it's quite a skill.  The laconic narrator is deeply observant.  He lets on and lets in, but sparely, almost non-judgmentally.  Almost.

There's a deli Christina and I patronize now on the corner of Lexington and Seventy-Seventh.  To some I saw we're friends with the owner, but I recognize the relationship for what it is.  We are the parents with a jog stroller who buy lox when friends are in town and many other specialty items on a regular basis.  He is the owner who makes us feel special....

The next three pieces in the book are equally unusual, engrossing, unexpected.  The stories aren't extreme in their limning of modern life, nor are they are stories we've read before.  They are interesting and well-metered, small jealousies, odd victories, exploded scenes.  I can't wait to read the rest of the stories (some interconnected, some not), but I did not want to wait any longer to tell you (and to tell Jessica, too) how happy I am for her new book.



Welcome home, JFK.