Beth Kephart's Blog, page 193

not quite self portraits (because someone else took them)

My husband is at work on a new series of art pieces that begin with photography (and become far more).  In the process of making these new things (which I will someday showcase here) he has been testing a series of lights and flashes, and so today, after I came home from church, I sat for a few moments while he tested one thing, then the next.



These are a few unfinished outtakes. [image error]

Young Writers Take the Park...In Pictures (thanks to Christine Weiser)

With my camera slipped into oblivion (at least for the time being), I could not do one of my favorite things yesterday, which is to document the day being lived.



You can imagine my joy, then, when the ever-delightful Christine Weiser sent along the link to her slide show of the Pretzel Park portion of Young Writers Take the Park.  Part of yesterday's great happiness lay in listening to the fabulous musicians (including Melrose Q) who joined in the festivities.  All of that was recorded here, by Christine, who creates and runs Philadelphia Stories.



Rain was hovering.  The wind blew.  The sky was a mean Brillo pad.  The intrepid did not care.  Thank you, Christine, for the gift of this show.  Thank you, Melrose Q, for the music.  (Yes, I was the one who was dancing.)



And thank you, teen workshoppers (and teachers, families, friends, great authors, fabulous indie The Spiral Bookcase).  The work Elizabeth Mosier and I bore witness to yesterday was so full of heart and soul and goodness.



Case in point, this poem by Davis O'Leary.  Davis, who goes to T/E Middle School, was one of our winners, and he set the tone for the afternoon with this piece, which he crafted in about three minutes flat:















Community




Sense of one is a
part of more

Feeling of interests
in others' worth

Walking on the same
path, whether exciting or bore

Keeping all the
secrets of our mind we swore.




Monotonous people,
even them we hold close,

Being a part of
something bigger is what we love most.

In this group we all
feel like the host

So,
to the sense of togetherness, I toast.[image error]

We Took the Park

This is not a photograph of our young writers; I lost my camera in the great activity of this Young Writers Take the Park Day.  But it is a photograph of my hometown, Wayne, and it is an image of kids hurrying toward their future.



Elizabeth Mosier, April Lindner, A.S. King, and Susan Campbell Bartoletti—I am so grateful to you for the time you spent today, for the hugeness of your hearts, for being there.  The rain threatened, but it did not fall.  The workshop writers came, and oh, did they write.  And when it came time for the teen winners to read their work aloud, not one of them faltered.  Clear voiced and big hearted, they announced their talent to the world.



A huge thank you to Ann of The Spiral Bookcase who made the event happen, to the renowned authors who took this afternoon out of their lives for kids, to Jamie-Lee Josselyn of Penn who brought her great spirit and news of the future, to Christine Weiser of Philadelphia Stories (and Philadelphia Stories Jr.), and to the teachers and parents who opened the door (and provided transportation).



Finally, Elizabeth Mosier:  I have taught a lot of workshops in my day.  Today, working in unison with you, will always be remembered fondly.  Thank you for everything.

Young Writers Take the Park: celebrating our winners, and an open invitation

As many of you know, we have been hard at work on Young Writers Take the Park—an opportunity for Philadelphia-area teens to submit their work for consideration for publication (and a public reading), to work with authors in an intimate workshop setting, to meet some of the best young adult authors living and working in Pennsylvania today, and to get to know the brand-new independent bookstore, The Spiral Bookcase.




Elizabeth Mosier, who has one of the best pairs of lit eyes on the planet (and a sophisticated critique vocabulary, I might add) helped me judge the many semi-finalists that were presented by the teachers (and friends) of Conestoga High School, T/E Middle School, Villa Maria Academy, Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls, and Penn Alexander.  To all those who took the time to submit, and to all those who encouraged participation, we thank you.




We were unanimous in our selections.  The winners are:




Celeste Flahaven "Untitled," Villa Maria Academy




"Breeze rippled the tall grass and the flaxen heads of wheat bent to reveal golden undersides...."





Maria Dulin, "Prodigy," Villa Maria Academy




"Take away anything, but you take away my music, my hearing, then you may as well take away my life."



Calamity Rose Jung-Allen, Penn Alexander 




"Pudgy cats yowl in alleyways, deserted..."




Olivia McCloskey, "Goodbye," Villa Maria Academy




"Will remembered sliding down onto the floor, his back against the wall, the phone clutched to his ear by his white-knuckled hand.  That was the phone call that had changed his life forever."



Lauren Harris, "The Confessions of a Not-So-Only Child," T/E Middle School






"Let the record show that I, Ivy Lee Miller, loved being an only child...."



Davis O'Leary, "Reflection," T/E Middle School




"Eyes crusted with the dust of restless sleep...."








These winning entries will appear in a forthcoming issue of Philadelphia Stories Jr., thanks to the generosity of Christine Weiser and her team.




Our semi-finalists will be joining us for the workshop that Elizabeth Mosier and I will be teaching near The Spiral Bookcase premises, starting at 1:30 tomorrow. At 3 o'clock, the teen winners will read from their work at Pretzel Park (or inside, if rain tries to thwart us).




Please join us, starting at 3 PM in Pretzel Park to hear from the teens and to meet the truly great writers Susan Campbell Bartoletti, A.S. King, April Linder, and Elizabeth Mosier, who will be there to talk informally about the writing life and to autograph their books for you.

now I will tell you a story

I had, as we know, been working on my sleep (which is to say, on getting some) but sometimes schedules trump your health.  And so this week I have been back to my old tricks, hovering over this computer at all the odd hours, getting more behind with each passing tock.



But today (it seems like a century ago) began in slightly different fashion.  It was early, very.  It was a foggy stew out there—wafting efflorescence—and utterly dark, save for the headlights that had pulled up outside my house.  Wait, I thought, in my groggy state.  A car? Outside? At this hour?  I opened my door to investigate.  A man up near the house went flying.  In my confused dumbness, I called out, What are you doing?  In his confused state, he answered: Looking for scraps.  His voice was Spanish.  His truck screeched away.  I watched him run the stop sign.



All day long, as I have conducted interview after interview, written story after story, taken more than a passing peek at our lovely Teen Day Writing entries, I have thought about this man.  Was I in danger?  Was he?  What happens if he returns?  Should I stay in my little box of an office all night long tonight, keeping watch?  Would that matter?



Late in the day, still the feeling of night on my skin, the weirdness of the exchange in my heart, I went outside to take a walk.  Outside, in the world, I discovered, everything is white and yellow, pink.  It is magnolia trees that bloomed too soon and are shaking their tresses to the ground.

these things happened (all in one day)

1. The masterful movie star slash ballroom dancer slash teacher Jan Paulovich said my cha-cha wasn't all bad.



2. I only nearly lost one toe nail when doing a particularly tricky tango movie several times in a row, poorly.



3. My kid got an A on his ballroom dance midterm at his university (yes, it is his sixth course, don't you fear).



That's enough in one day for me.



But that was yesterday.  I struggle to think of ways that I can transcend that degree of excitement today.



The day is young.  I shall go forth.

Young Writers Take the Park (redux)

Preparations for Young Writers Take the Park continue at a furious pace, and I want to extend my gratitude to those teachers who—despite all the pressures attendant with the standardized testing that sweeps through these parts in March—have encouraged their young writers to put forth submissions and to consider joining us for both the workshop and the afternoon of readings, signings, and songs.




If any of you are interested in participating in the workshops or the day itself, please double click on the poster above or feel free to contact either myself or The Spiral Bookcase.


For the rest of you — please join Susan Campbell Bartoletti, A.S. King, April Lindner, Elizabeth Mosier, some fantastic teen writers, and myself for an afternoon in Pretzel Park.

porch with a view (scene from Penn)

It's only a snapshot.  It was taken on the run.  It's not art, but it's what I love—this Penn campus and the students it shares with me.  My city beyond. 



Do you want me to tell you how it feels to listen to my students lead the critiques of their classmates' work?  Never a cruel word but never a less than honest one.  An impossible balance?  Not to them, it's not.



I call them my kids, to whomever will listen.



I claim them as my own.

Writing to David Bowie

When I write Berlin for Tamra Tuller at Philomel—when I steal the time, when I shake the hours down and claim a few as my own (give me time, give it to me)—I am writing this song.  I am dancing to this song.  I am my long-ago self, in love with David Bowie and this very particular tune.


Today in the foggy dark I wrote a snatch of a scene.



I cannot tell you how much more alive I feel when I write.

Celebrating Siobhan Vivian and THE LIST

I first met Siobhan Vivian in a town called Lititz in the dark of a hotel restaurant.  It was after hours; the crowd was gone.  She was there with her best friends, her writing friends, each a lit star in her own right.  They were a raucous foursome, those girls at the other table, and I was feeling quiet, and besides, I was there with my husband, a man now nearly famous for avoiding what is known in my circles as lit talk.



Still, Siobhan insisted that we join them at her table.  She talked, they talked, I listened.  By the end of the night and a bottle of wine, I was talking, too.  More than talking, I was laughing.



In the years since, Siobhan and I have found each other in Florida, say, or in the mire of Facebook.  I have watched her career take off, her books earn praise; I have cheered her on.  Last week, when I realized that Siobhan was in my city for the Public Library Association meeting, I set off to find her once more.  We missed each other by minutes, no more.  We talked by phone instead.



We want the people we care about to write good books so that we can say—with all our hearts— I love it.  I am saying here, with all my heart, that I love Siobhan Vivian's new book, THE LIST, which is due out in early April, near my birthday (a good omen), and which tackles big issues—self worth, discrimination, vulnerability, beauty and all that beauty isn't.



There is so much that beauty isn't.



The premise is delivered in the very first lines:

For as long as anyone can remember, the students of Mount Washington High have arrived at school on the last Monday in September to find a list naming the prettiest and the ugliest girl in each grade.



This year will be no different.

Eight girls, then—four named pretty, four named ugly—and with thoughtful, third-person omniscience their stories get told.  It's a risky proposition, a novel that could only work if Siobhan went beyond stereotype and delivered fresh tales, if she made us think newly, if she hinged the whole thing around a searing who-dunnit, and if she wrote the heck out of every sentence. 



All this she does.  Siobhan is smart.  She pays attention.  To how teens think and talk, to the details that will matter to those who pick up THE LIST looking for some semblance of herself, or of them.  Siobhan's books resonate with teens because she has never forgotten what it feels like to be one, and because, on her tours with other books, she has stopped to ask the teens she meets what is going on right now, what is real right now, what is shaping young lives.  She has asked, and she has listened, and with compassion she has reached back out, writing a novel that is equal parts story and salve.  She's still inviting people to her table, that Siobhan Vivian.  I'm glad to sit there with her.