Beth Kephart's Blog, page 174

on writing acknowledgments

I spent the better part of two days this week writing the acknowledgments for Handling the Truth, my book about the making of memoir, which is due out next year from Gotham.  It occurred to me, as I worked, how difficult this all is—how difficult I always find it to say, with any degree of precision, thank you.  It was especially hard this time given the nature of the book, infused as it is with my experiences with students, with passages from books I've loved, with lessons learned both obliquely and directly, with opportunities that I have been granted, gifted.



We are never alone in this world.  Our tenacity matters, perhaps, our dreams, and yes, perhaps, we knock on doors, but we must wait for others to do the opening.  In writing acknowledgments I always hope to make it clear that I recognize that so much of what a book is or has become is thanks to the kindness of others.



If I fail at expressing that thought adequately, I ask your forgiveness.

web of neighbors in time of pain

I live in a neighborhood few choose ever to leave.  They arrive as young families and they stay.  Long before we arrived, nearly two decades ago, community abounded here, long memories of shared picnics, block parties, baseball games, horse show extravaganzas.  The houses, by and large, are small.  The spaces in between are slender.  When someone is baking cookies we can smell the sugar crisp. When a car is away too long or a cat strays uncomfortably far, we notice.  When we take walks, and almost every day I take a walk, we aren't just using our muscles and our lungs.  We are stopping to say hello, to get the news.  Every generation lives here, and together we live companionably, as family.



Yesterday afternoon there was a familiar rapping on my front door, and when I turned the corner from my office I found my beloved neighbor Jane.  She is a teacher, a mother, a reader, a woman of whom I have written here, someone I've written into books.  She is so lovely, but her face was sad, and I sensed at once that off, wrong thing.



Terribly wrong. For one of the most dashing, funny, lovable, quietly triumphant among us is in great pain.  It broke my heart—it breaks all of our hearts—to learn this.



I took a walk after I heard the news.  Out in the streets, the neighbors were scheming—what could they do, what could be offered, how can the strength of us all, netted together, become strength for one in pain?



Do you know how it is when something is unbearably sad and heartbreakingly beautiful at the very same moment in time?



That is us here now, where I live.


And this must be all of us, in the wake of the news from Colorado.  

Small Damages, Day of Riches

Today, a day of riches, and I'm not sure I can adequately capture them, reflect them, send them back out into the world with as much power as they have—each of them—given to me.  Quiet power.  Not the kind that goes off strutting, but the kind that is found in the middle of the night, alone, beneath a full bright sheet of stars.



As they occurred to me, then, in the order that I discovered them:


A dear overnight send off from My VERY GOOD Friend Amy.  



Pam van Hylckama's (which is to say Bookalicious's) exquisite review of Small Damages.  She was in a car wash, as I recall, when she first read this book some time ago.  I remember the happiness I felt when she whispered a few encouraging words my way.



Serena Agusto-Cox's incredibly kind Book Birthday Blog, which can be found here.



Tamra Tuller's news of a beautiful VOYA review, which called Small Damages, among other things, "a magical story that is simple, yet complex."



Joseph Glantz going live with an interview he has been conducting with me over the past few days; his questions touched on all aspects of my career—from Flow to Zenobia to Dangerous Neighbors to the memoir work and to my love of place, my approach to dialogue, and my obsession with metaphors.  Our conversation can be found here. 



Twitter love from Pam and Danielle, Kelly and Melissa, the Penguin team, Maya, Lydia, Jenna, and Ruta Sepetys, whose love continued into this late afternoon, when I came home from a circus and discovered a gift from her at my front door.  We shall, indeed, have cake, Ruta.  We shall.  A note from Alyson Hagy, who cares so much.  A note from my dear Ivy Goodman.  An enthusiastic call from Amy Rennert, my agent.  Dear notes from Jessica Shoffel.  So many sweet emails from Tamra Tuller.  Michael Green being his cryptic-funny-smart self.  A virtual moment with Jill Santopolo.  Kindness via Facebook. 



The gloriously thoughtful words from the well-known and widely loved blogger, Florinda (3rsblog), with whom I have now had a long friendship, and with whom I get to cross paths, in person, every now and then, even though she lives 3,000 miles away.  Her words are precious to me, and she is, too.  Her thoughts about Small Damages are here.



The realization (thanks to Twitter) that Small Damages had been named one of five hot YA picks "that will thrill adult readers just as much as teenagers" by She Knows Book Lounge.  



The stumbled-upon discovery that Melissa Sarno of the blog This Too is holding a Small Damages giveaway over on her own fine words-rich blog.  That rascal, that sneak—but thank you, Melissa.  You. Should. Not. Have.  If you want a shot at Melissa's generosity, you need to go here. 



An email from Missy Kemp containing the photograph above.  Small Damages, arrived in her home.  That hint of orange.  And, soon after, the arrival, here, of my own box of books.  I can hold this book now in my hands.



And, finally, on this day, news that BookPage had included Small Damages among "the handful of teen books from this year that adults need to read."  The others on that list are Daniel Handler's Why We Broke Up, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, Nike Lake's In Darkness, Patricia McCormick's Never Fall Down, Elizabeth Wein's Code Name Verity, David Levithan's Every Day, Margo Lanagan's The Brides of Rollrock Island, and Rachel Hartman's Seraphina.  That is shocking and glorious company to keep, and of course the idea of having Small Damages be considered as a crossover title is glory to the ears of this writer, who just yesterday published a piece on the value (or not) of YA labels. 

two birthdays: a son's, a book's

The most important thing about this day is that it marks my son's twenty-third birthday.  He came into the world after thirty-six hours of labor.  He had a full head of thick, black hair.  He reached for my husband's finger and squeezed it tight.  The next day, we drove him to my mother's house in a beat-up Ford Mustang—his hat still on despite the July heat.



There's no accounting for a mother's love.  There's no math that will contain it.  The baby became a boy became a kid became a man—so bright, so inventive, so funny, so adventuresome, so thoughtful, and with a raft of terrific friends, and with a future that seems (thanks to some recent interviews) so close and within reach, and with a talent for loving.



That boy traveled to Spain with me and my husband, several times, to visit my brother-in-law.  We together met characters like an old man named Luis, and like a count who raised Spain's prized fighting bulls.  We traveled out to a broad cortijo, watched the gypsies dance, sat front row at flamenco shows.  We ate paella at midnight on the streets, tapas in tiny bars.  We went in and out of bull rings and up cathedral towers and in between the narrow spaces of Seville.  We watched the nuns flutter by.  We saw children playing on rooftops.  And when I started to write a novel with all of this as the backdrop, this son of mine listened to me read out loud—this passage or that at the kitchen table.  He steered the ship with his spare comments and would not let me give up in the face of grave disappointments.  He said, "Believe in yourself."



I don't think there would be a Small Damages without this guy, and that brings us to birthday number two.  Small Damages, a book that has always been dedicated to my son, is being launched today.  That it is a book, that it has come this far, is all thanks to the extremely extraordinary Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo of Philomel. That it has been welcomed into this world is all thanks to the generosity of readers and bloggers and reviewers and interviewers, whose goodness is unfathomable and restorative and redeeming and proof that maybe a girl can write and write and write and not be especially famous, but keep writing, and then have a moment in time like this one.



An unforgettable moment in time.



To all of you, and to my agent Amy Rennert, who has been there through all fourteen books, thick and thin (and so much thin), thank you.



Cake is now being served for all.



The icing is here, in these words from the great (truly great) Pam van Hylckama of Bookalicious.org and in this kindness from the ever-kind and supportive Serena Agusto-Cox.



From Pam:

It is not often that a book that makes you lose your breath. You read
novel that makes you want to stand on top of a building and read the
prose aloud to those walking below. Words that make you feel human and
humble in the most gorgeous way.



If I could read Small Damages over and over again just like
it was the first time I would never read another book again. This post
is less of a review and more of a plea. Please go to your bookstore, or
your library and bring this book home. Make yourself a glass of iced tea
and sit in the sun and imagine that you too are in Spain and imagine
the scents of Seville all around you while you read.

What makes for a classic book, and what is the utility of the YA label? I ask those questions at Publishing Perspectives

Over on Publishing Perspectives today, I'm asking a perhaps radical (and yes, of course, naive) question:  What would happen if we stopped labeling books, YA or otherwise?  It's a notion I've bandied about in my head for a while now—one that seems extraordinarily relevant as we consider the very notion of crossover books, classic books, and the role that labels have or have not played.  From the essay:

Crossover books. Classic books. Aren’t they, at the very least,
kissing cousins? And aren’t they also the books whose labels have been
systematically sidestepped or blatantly ignored, whose labels, in the
end, made no perceivable difference, save for the various honors and
awards for which the books qualified? This conspicuous refusal to stay
within the reading lines has represented, I think we can all agree,
excellent good news for the books themselves, and excellent good news
for readers.



What, then, does all this suggest about a label’s utility? What,
indeed, would happen if the “young adult” label suddenly (in
fantastical, whimsical, utterly surreal fashion) vanished? Certainly the
YA label is not “protecting” teens from scandalous reads (however
readers choose to define scandalous these days); it’s not the
equivalent, in other words, of a PG rating. And certainly the YA label
doesn’t tell us much of anything about the story we’re about to
encounter, or about its relative artistry. “YA” tells us only that a
teen or teens is involved. But so what, really, because at the end of
the day, that’s the case for many an adult novel, too.

The whole can be found here.



In the meantime, while I was posting this, I received word that Kirkus named Small Damages the recommended teen book of the week.



My head happily spins.

Small Damages: the cover story and a blogger's thoughtful response

How does a book get a cover?  How does a story emerge as a bright concentrate of itself?



Melissa Walker has been asking authors this question for a long time, and I'm lucky on two counts—Melissa (an author supreme) is my friend, and she has kindly asked me.  I tell the story of the Small Damages cover (and lessons I learned before the Small Damages cover) over on the Barnes and Noble Community Blog, with all thanks to dear Melissa.



I was just about to post this when Cynthia Pittman, a Facebook friend, pointed me toward another act of supreme generosity on this warm July day.  That generosity comes from Sarah Laurence, a so-intelligent, thoughtful reader who is also a writer who is also an artist who is also a woman who has learned to live a magnificently balanced life as a creative artist, mom, wife, and lover of the world beyond.  Sarah read Small Damages lately, and she had this to say.



Melissa and Sarah:  thank you.

A Small Damages Reading, An Embrace of Chester County Book and Music Company

I was shocked and of course deeply saddened when I learned last week that Chester County Book and Music Company—the grand lady of independents in my part of the world, a vast store, encyclopedic in scope, and intimate in nature—was now occupying its West Chester store on a month-to-month basis.  It will remain active, we are told, at least through the fall.  But the future beyond that is cloudy, unsure.  And we readers and writers are devastated.



Chester County is where it always happened.  It's where the big-name authors came, the celebrities, the locals, the book clubs, the university students from down the road, the mothers on an afternoon out.  It's where the staff, many of them long-timers, read passionately and recommended enthusiastically—in person and by way of placards all around the store.  A.S. King was there on a rainy night, and we gathered around.  K.M. Walton threw her launch party there and hundreds, I mean hundreds, rallied.  Kate Moses and I once sat in the near dark on a very rainy night and met the likes of Kathye Fetsko Petrie.  I met Ilene Wong, thanks to CCBM.  I met a band of students from West Chester University, saw again old teachers and city friends.



What will we do without our store?  How many nights did I come home with a bag of books that I had bought strictly and solely on staff recommendations (and they were almost always right)?  How many books in this book-crowded house of mine first lived at CCBM?



And what can we say to thank those who made CCBM what it is, those who must now look for new jobs to do, new ways to channel their passion for stories?



Joanne Fritz, who spent many years behind the desk and in the aisles of CCBM, was the first to get in touch with me about Small Damages, months and months ago.  It is thanks to her that I will be at CCBM this coming Saturday, fitting, I think, that my first event for Small Damages be held here.  Perhaps I'll see you there, but more importantly, perhaps you'll find time, between now and this fall, to make your way to this great store and thank it for all it has given to all of us throughout these many years.




SMALL DAMAGES signing
Chester County Book and Music Company

975 Paoli Pike  West Chester, PA 19380

West Chester, PA

2 PM

Haloes

The heat was aggressive today.  It knocked the civility out of drivers.  It was implicated in the four accidents I saw and drove the bugs into my ears.  Soupy, swampy, angry, it would not rest until it had exploded (it was quite the sight, it really was) the bottle of Dr. Pepper I had carried with me to the car.  Pssssshhhhh Bang Splat fiiiiizzzzzzzzzzz.  Too bad they don't make interior windshield wipers.



Such sweet things happened, nonetheless.  They may not seem related, but they are.  My friend Heather's baby boy, Ryder, was born at 4:44 PM, a good omen of some sort, I'm sure.  Ryder's going to be loved something fierce by all of us who love Heather, and by Heather herself, so full of love.  Heather's been asking Ryder to come out and play for some time now, and forever now, he will.



All across the country, meanwhile, another mother, this one named Danielle, was tending to her two—taking care, listening, watching them tangle and grow.  Danielle, too, is a very special woman, a person whose priorities in life (and gentleness, and dreams) have so much to teach.  Danielle gives everything—to her family, to this book world, to people like me—and the next day she gets up, and somehow does it all again.



Today I was a recipient of Danielle's exceptional gifts.  I was, and I don't know what to say. 



When I say that I don't know what to say, I really mean that.  I don't.  Kindnesses like hers cannot be answered.


Simply, then, with gratitude, I share her words here, which I found at just the right time of this tumultuous and yet still beautiful day.



I am sending my love to these two mothers right now.  In a world this hot, in a summer this thick with heat, they teach us how to carry on with dignity and grace.

Making War Personal in Young Adult Novels

I have been known to write to Ed Nawotka, the man in charge of Publishing Perspectives, with urgent requests, fanciful ideas, speculations.  Would you be interested in a piece on...., I'll say, and because Ed is so kind, he humors me.



Recently I wrote to Ed about a topic that has long obsessed me—the place of war in young adult novels.  How is it best handled?  What should it teach?  How can it make for compelling, not textbook dusty, reads? I'm interested in general, and I'm interested in particular, for there are vestiges of the Spanish Civil War in Small Damages, and there is the aftermath of World War II in my Berlin novel, due out in 2015.



I set out to read or re-read a dozen YA war novels to get answers to my questions.  My thoughts on the topic shape the feature story in today's issue of Publishing Perspectives.  The essay begins with the words below and can be found in total here:

War is personal, the saying goes. It’s the buckle and moil where the
house used to be. It’s the shadow where once there was a friend. It’s
the brother gone missing and the mother at risk. It is depravity,
despotism, lies.



If
our only hope against future war resides in the young we raise and
teach, then war novels written for teens occupy an extraordinarily
important place in the young adult canon. They have — one might say, or I
will say — a responsibility. To tell the truth. To broker a truce. To
declare, “This is courage or decency or love in a world that can barely
be explained.”

 

the Penguin interview

The Penguin team is just that—a beautiful, competent, engaged team.  Last week the team members had a few questions for me—on favorite characters, getaway dreams, desert islands, Twitter capabilities, and next things.  The interview is posted here.  I share the content below:




SMALL DAMAGES, the 14th novel from National Book
Award finalist Beth Kephart, has been garnering heaps of praise in the
weeks before its release. The New York Times Book Review called the book “dreamlike”, opining that “the reader is lost and found and lost and found again.” The Los Angeles Times labeled it “lovely”, and in a starred review Kirkus said that SMALL DAMAGES was “lovely and unusual—at once epic and intimate.”




Having read SMALL DAMAGES myself, I can completely
confirm all of these wonderful accolades. SMALL DAMAGES is, indeed, a
beautiful, absorbing read, which is one of the many reasons we wanted to
find out more about Beth herself! Take it away, Ms. Kephart:




Name:  Beth Kephart
Novel:  Small Damages
Available: July 19th




Who’s your favorite author, living or dead? Michael Ondaatje.  He is the man.




What’s your favorite thing about your book? That it kept my imagination, my heart, in southern Spain for a very long time. A decade, to be precise. 




If you could spend one year on a deserted island with one character from literature, who would you choose? Goodness. 
Really?  I have to choose?  Can’t I have a party?  Is the budget too
small?  If I answered this question for real, you would think I was a
depressed person.  Therefore, I’m going to remain frustratingly coy.  It
is my authorial prerogative.

[Ed: Not fair! We want to know! :)]




Where do you write? [Photo of workspace above.] I
type in a room that was built for that purpose; the attached photo
offers proof.  I write (handwrite) in another room, with my leg slung
over the back of the couch.  In neither room can I claim good posture.




Who is your favorite hero or heroine of history? George C. Childs, the 19th
century editor of Philadelphia’s Public Ledger.  He was America’s
greatest philanthropist for a long while.  He was so smart and so moral
that both the Republicans and the Democrats begged him to run for
president.  He chose not to.




Do you tweet? What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever tweeted? I
am only now learning how to tweet.  Or.  I am learning how to manage a
Twitter account.  I have not yet enrolled in the tweet funny-ness
classes.  Can I get back to you on this once I have my Twitter diploma?
Can you recommend a good tweet funny-ness class? [Ed: You can find Beth on Twitter here!]




What is your favorite season? Autumn.  It’s yours, too, I bet.[Ed: It is! How did you know?]




If you could teleport anywhere in the known universe right now, where would you go? Oh
my gosh.  Is there an Around the World in Eighty Days option on this
question?  Can I go to Seville, Spoleto, Venice, Berlin, London, and San
Miguel de Allende all in the same 24 hours?  I should also probably
stop by Santa Tecla, El Salvador, to see my mother-in-law.  We’re good
friends, now.




Do you have any writing rituals? My
very special, super secret, unpatented writing ritual involves relaxing
into a half sleep.  In this condition, I dream.  And in dreams
are…well, you know the rest.




What is your idea of earthly happiness? A long walk with my son, a glass of wine with my husband, and water, somewhere near.




What is the best concert you’ve ever been to? I haven’t gone to it yet, but it’s a-coming.  Bruce Springsteen.  September 2012.  I have waited a lifetime.




What are you currently working on? I
have three books due out within the next eighteen months, and they are
all pretty close to done.   At the very moment, therefore, I am working
hard at reading the close to 100 books I decided to buy this past month
(hey, I support my industry).  The books look very pretty in their
respective stacks around my house, of course.  But I would grow a few
necessary brain cells, I suspect, if I settled down to read them.

………………………………..

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer some of our probing questions, Beth!

You can find Beth online on Twitter, Facebook and her blog.

Add SMALL DAMAGES to your Goodreads “to-read” shelf!

Purchase SMALL DAMAGES from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local independent bookseller.