Beth Kephart's Blog, page 191

Small Damages has its first foreign sale!

Here's the news, and I'll share it quickly:



Small Damages, my southern Spain novel, has been sold to the Dutch publishing house, Callenbach. 



I have never had a foreign sale prior to the U.S. launch of a book and, well, this does make me happy.



Okay, I'll confess.  It makes me more than happy.


Huge gratitude to Tamra Tuller and the Philomel team that made this dream come true.

reflections on smart, attractive people

When handsome men or beautiful women take up the work of the intellect, it impresses us because we know they could have chosen other paths to being impressive; that they chose the path of the mind suggests that there is something more worthwhile than a circuitous route to the good things that the good-looking get just by showing up.



Adam Gopnik, "Facing History: Why we Love Camus," New Yorker, April 9, 2012

(For the record: In my travels, I have met many people who are both gorgeous and smart. Some of them are even my friends. But I did find this assertion by Gopnik in a truly fine essay about Camus to be, well, I think the term is bold.)

Join K.M. Walton, Elisa Ludwig, Amy Garvey, E.C. Myers, Monica Carnesi, Ame Dyckman, Dianne Salerni, and yours truly for the Barnes & Noble Educator Reception

So here's a fun upcoming event.  Thanks to the organizational genius and generosity of K.M. Walton (whose mega book launch party you read of here), a number of young adult writers will be convening at the Barnes & Noble (Exton) on April 18 for the Educator Reception.



We're hoping to see you there, and to entice you further, I'm providing details below:





Barnes & Noble Educator Reception (Exton, PA)

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

4:00 to 6:00 PM

301 Main Street

Exton, PA 19341 

Featuring prizes, store discounts, two special teaching presentations...

and the chance to meet eight area young adult authors.






5:00 PM K.M. Walton

HOW TO GET YOUR STUDENTS TO WRITE LIKE THEY MEAN IT



5:30 PM Beth Kephart

STORY TOPICS THAT INVOLVE THE WHOLE CLASS AT THE SAME TIME



Signings by:

 K. M. Walton

CRACKED (YA)

TEACHING NUMERACY: 9 CRITICAL HABITS TO IGNITE MATHEMATICAL THINKING



Bio: K. M. Walton is the author of Cracked. As a former middle-school language-arts teacher and teaching coach, she is passionate about education and ending peer bullying. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family. You can find her online at KMWalton.com and on Twitter at @KMWalton1.





Elisa Ludwig

PRETTY CROOKED (YA)



Bio: Elisa Ludwig lives in Philadelphia. When she's not writing fiction for teens she writes about food for the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications. Pretty Crooked is her first novel, and the first of a three-book series.



Amy Garvey

COLD KISS (YA)

Bio: Amy Garvey is a former editor who now enjoys working from the other side of the desk. She grew up reading everything she could get her hands on and watching too much TV (which she still does, and now includes an obsession with the CW's Supernatural). Cold Kiss is her first novel for young adults, and the sequel, Glass Heart, will be out from HarperTeen in September 2012. 





Beth Kephart

YA Books:

UNDERCOVER

HOUSE OF DANCE

NOTHING BUT GHOSTS

THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE

DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS

YOU ARE MY ONLY



Bio: Beth Kephart is the author of five memoirs, including the National Book Award finalist A SLANT OF SUN and the BookSense pick GHOSTS IN THE GARDEN.  Her other eight books include the autobiography of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, FLOW, and such acclaimed young adult novels as UNDERCOVER, HOUSE OF DANCE, and YOU ARE MY ONLY.  SMALL DAMAGES, Kephart's seventh young adult novel, will be released by Philomel in the summer of 2012, and she is at work on two more Philomel books as well as a middle grade book about 1871 Philadelphia. Kephart teaches memoir at the University of Pennsylvania, reviews for the Chicago Tribune, has judged numerous literary contests, and has had her work translated into more than fifteen languages. She is the strategic writing partner in the boutique marketing communications firm, Fusion, and is a freelance reporter for Publishing Perspectives. Please visit Beth's blog, twice named a top author blog by the BBAW, at www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com





E. C. Myers

FAIR COIN (YA sci-fi)



Bio: E. C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts. He is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and a member of the prolific NYC writing group Altered Fluid. In the rare moments when he isn't writing, he blogs about Star Trek at theviewscreen.com, plays video games, watches classic films and television, sleeps as little as possible, and spends too much time on the Internet. Fair Coin is his first novel. To find out more about E. C. Myers and his work, visit his website and blog at ecmyers.net or find him on Twitter: @ecmyers.





Monica Carnesi

LITTLE DOG LOST (picture book)



Bio: Mônica Carnesi is crazy about (in no particular order) books, art supplies, and animals. She works as a librarian, which allows her to combine her love of children's literature and her passion for illustration.  At home she draws, paints and doodles constantly and is happily building her own personal library of children's books from all over the world.  Her first picture book, Little Dog Lost: The True Story of a Brave Dog Named Baltic, was published in January 2012 by Nancy Paulsen Books/Penguin Young Readers Group.  Mônica is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and now lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their own little dog





Ame Dyckman

BOY + BOT (picture book), illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

TEA PARTY RULES, illustrated by Keith Campbell



Bio: As a kid, Ame Dyckman always had her nose in a book.  (And usually, Band-Aids on her knees from running into stuff.)  Not much has changed now that she's a grown-up. But now, sometimes, Ame will put a book down long enough to write one of her own and she has a new project to announce soon! Ame lives in New Jersey with her family, pets (including a demanding-but-adorable squirrel), book collection, and a big box of Band-Aids.  You can visit Ame at amedyckman.com



Dianne Salerni

WE HEAR THE DEAD



Bio: Dianne K. Salerni is an elementary school teacher, author, and online book reviewer.  She has previously published educational materials for teachers, as well as short stories.  We Hear the Dead is her first full-length novel.  With her husband and her two daughters, Salerni lives in Pennsylvania, where she is at work on her next novel.[image error]

garden in the city

sometimes the mind, crowded in, feels like this.

it's all circling back: Dangerous Neighbors, Joe Polin, You Are My Only, Into the Tangle of Friendship

It's funny how things are circling back to me this week—Susan's review of You Are My Only, Bonnie Jacobs' discovery of my Into the Tangle of Friendship within the pages of Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God, and, early this morning, a note from the very brilliant young reader and critic, John Jacobson, who wrote to say that Emma, a reading/blogging friend of his (Booking Through 365), had read Dangerous Neighbors upon his recommendation and had had kind things to say. 



I was particularly moved by Emma's observations about the end of the novel, something about which very few have commented.  And so I share those words here, with the hope that you will visit Emma's blog and discover not just her review of Neighbors, but her fine mind in general. 

End: This book may have
one of the very best YA plot climaxes I've experienced in recent
history. While I knew instinctively how the climax would end, it still
affected me. This is very, very powerful, and it might be the crowning
glory of the novel. 5 flowers.

(Note to readers:  Emma talks about William in her review, a character that I, too, have not forgotten.  I hope I'll be able to share William's story, now completed as an 1871 prequel, with you in total soon.)



Finally, in this week (and it's only Tuesday!) of looking back, I am celebrating Joe Polin, a former student, whose beautiful essay was published in the Pennsylvania Gazette last year.  Joe is coming to class with editor Trey Popp to talk about how an assignment becomes a story becomes a submission becomes an edited final piece. 



Let's just say that I've been looking forward to this class for a long time.  I'm hoping Joe is still wearing his smiley-faced tie.[image error]

You know a real friend when you have one: Girl Meets God and Into the Tangle of Friendship

Every now and then, someone will write to say that they have found my name in a book they're reading.  To be specific, they mention Lauren F. Winner's much-loved 2002 memoir, Girl Meets God.



Here is my confession.  I have read two of Lauren's books, one for review.  We exchanged emails for awhile, but long after 2002.  I really, genuinely like Lauren Winner.  But if I ever knew how my name floated through Lauren's book I don't remember.  I remember not wanting to hunt the passage down.  I remember that I worried about intruding. I remember feeling surprised and stunned that a writer of the stature and quality of Lauren had read one of my books, long ago.  Maybe I'd seen the passage at one point.  If I had, the memory is lost.



But this afternoon, Bonnie Jacobs took the time to type the passage out and to send it along.  The words, which I share here, fill me with new emotion at the end of a deep-dwelling day.  I had, it is true, written a book about friendship.  I'd called it Into the Tangle of Friendship (Houghton Mifflin).  It had been inspired by the return to my life of a lost high school friend, and by all the thinking I have done about how friends come and go, about how hard it is to know who a true friend is, about how devastating it can be when you learn that you weren't a real friend after all.  I have been, from time to time, and indeed far more than I wish, that person who proved useful.  Who could help escalate a career, perhaps, or see someone through to the other side of a dream, or listen for awhile, as trouble stirred. I have done my thing.  I have cheered others on.  I have been left for grander vistas, bigger prizes.



It's always stunning when you realize that the feeling of friendship wasn't mutual, that it was your utility, not your heart that mattered, but it's even more stunning when you know that in fact it is.  I am blessed today by having the right people in my life— solid people, constant people, we-know-we-are-there-for-each-other people.  Still, I think a lot about friendship.



The passage here, from Girl Meets God, with gratitude to Lauren and to Bonnie Jacobs:

The second bout was more recent.  I was lying on my couch one night, reading a book about friendship by Beth Kephart.  She writes about how friends are hard to make and hard to lose and how the only vocabulary we have for those losses is break-ups, romantic ones, but often the splitting apart of friends is harder, rarer, more long-lasting, grievous and generally devastating than any run-of-the-mill lovers' spat.  My body lay on the couch like a valley, my head propped up on four fluffy pillows and my legs folded in, sit-up style, my back flat against the sofa's blue-and-white stripes.  There I lay, listing all the friendships I had lost, all the people I'd betrayed or misled or just not kept up with, and then I felt gratitude again, felt it this time no less physically than hunger, felt the weight of it like a fog settling in over my stomach, felt it filling me heavy the way fruit fills a basket.  Lying on the couch, I could not believe God had given me all these people to love.  Even if I never had another friend ever, even if I spent the next seventy-five years rattling around lonely as a ghost of Christmas past, it would be too much ever to repay, all that love.  I slept on the couch, then, blanketed by the weight of my gratitude, Beth Kephart's book under my pillow.

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Susan reads You Are My Only

Every now and then a reader returns to you your own story.  She reads with that rare passion.  She honors your relationship your characters.  She doesn't judge; she understands.  She stays up late because you have, and because you will again.



That has happened here, and I am deeply moved.  At Two Heads Together Susan writes of her response to You Are My Only, a quiet and yet still controversial book that will always mean the world to me.



Her words mean the world.



She writes, in part, this.  The rest can be found here.

I read the stories of Sophie and Emmy, one beautiful word at a time,
savoring the words and images evoked by the poetry Beth Kephart brings
to us.  Eager to turn the page but yet reluctant to let it go, I read on
into the night knowing I needed sleep.  How can I turn out the light
when Emmy and Sophie yearn for what they can't have?  How can I leave
them when they are trapped and alone?

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Opening day at Chanticleer garden

It's been many years now since I first stumbled onto Chanticleer, a pleasure garden ten minutes from my home.  In the epics and eras since, Chanticleer has served as a retreat of sorts, become a place of friendship, and crept its way into two of my books (Ghosts in the Garden (a memoir) and Nothing but Ghosts (a YA novel)).  It has also become a birthday tradition.  The garden opens on April 1st of each year.  I go to bear witness and to reflect on my own life.



Profoundly exhausted, I wasn't sure that I'd make it this year.  I was glad I found a way.  The skies were gray but not storming when I arrived.  The daffodils and cherry trees had bloomed out early, as was this eager season's way.  Still, purple and blue electrified the landscape.  The neon koi were in their pond.  The pots were brimming.



"Now I'm going to show you my favorite part," a little girl told her mother as she ran by.  And then:  "Oh, look!  It's changed.  It's even better!"



Change. Yes. It just keeps coming. That's the way it is, the way it will be. But I am grateful for the familiar rolling hills of Chanticleer, the familiar faces.  I am grateful for the reflecting ponds that restore me, for the quiet that I find, because I'm searching.






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a video thanks, and the Small Damages jacket reveal

The Small Damages jacket reveal and a big thank you to all of you ... all offered up in less than two minutes.


Check out the Mood T-shirt.



smoking! [image error]

Mood, Memphis, Shubert, the Big Apple, the A plus, the book jacket: the day in pictures

On our way to "Memphis" yesterday we stopped in the Fashion District, rode the crowded elevator to the second floor of Mood, and shopped where the Project Runway stars shop—got lost among countless bolts of fabric (does anyone actually know how many bolts of fabric lie supine at Mood?).  Oh, this was a great thing to do.  Yes, I did come home with Mood feathers and a T-shirt.  Next we went to Parsons and stood inside its skinny lobby.  All so that I could say (to any who would listen; will you listen?):  I stood among the vapors of Mondo and Austin. 



"Memphis" was just what I needed yesterday—third-row orchestra seats, center, thanks to my brother.  I loved the storyline of this show, surged ecstatic about the stage sets, felt the hammering heart of the big dance numbers, totally dug that gospel choir.  I loved the two big guys who danced like there are no dance rules and who sang with such peppy abandon.



Just before the show began, I received a note from my agent, Amy Rennert (who always remembers), and another from Tamra Tuller, that dear soul, who was writing to say that my Small Damages jacket—a sample from the first run—would be waiting for me at home when I returned.  It's gorgeous!  It's debossed!! It, in some unpossess-able way, belongs to me.  And at this dark hour, dawn, I am still trying to figure out how to take a photograph of it so that you can see what the fabulous Michael Green calls its "special touches."  Philomel made an investment in this jacket. It shows. "You need to frame that one," my husband, the artist of inscrutable high standards, said.



On the bus home from NYC, our son called.  He's an extremely happy kid.  No, not a kid.  He's a young man with the right friends and a bright future and such a knack for analysis and writing that he earned an A plus on a big paper this week.  "What did the professor say?" I asked.  Quietly, then, never boastful, my son answered.



"Well," he said.  "He actually called it awesome."



"Awesome," I repeated.  "Wow. Was there more?"  I have to ask; my kid is immune to bragging and strut.  (Obviously he's a better person than his mother, but I've been saying that since the day he was born.)



"He said it wasn't just persuasive but innovative and inspired."



"Innovative!  Inspired!  Well, that must feel good."



"Yeah."  



"Can I see it some time?"



"If you want to."



If I want to.  Jeepers, I want to.



Today is Palm Sunday, April Fool's Day, my birthday.  There will be no client work undertaken during the next several hours (for any clients who may be reading).  There will be church, and then I'll take a drive to Clay's Creative Bakery and buy a couple of cupcakes.  I will eat at least one.  I will write Berlin in the afternoon.  I will figure out how to photograph the Small Damages jacket.  I will or will not take a walk, depending on the weather.



Peace.


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