Beth Kephart's Blog, page 27

THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU: The Goodreads Giveaway, and signings

Friends, This Is the Story of You, my Jersey shore storm mystery, is (I have heard it said) printed and on its way to me. Story has received two stars in these early days (Kirkus and School Library Journal) and kind words from BookPage and Publishers Weekly. It is a Junior Library Guild selection and will be featured in an upcoming story on environmentally aware novels for younger readers in The Writer Magazine.

The launch date (early April) grows near.

In celebration of it all, Chronicle Books is sponsoring a Goodreads Giveaway, starting tomorrow.

Information is right there (I turn to glance toward the left side of my blog, where I hope you now glance as well), should you wish to enter. Twenty-five will win.

In the meantime, a big box of One Thing Stolen paperbacks has arrived. One Thing Stolen , which won a Parents' Choice Gold Medal and is a TAYSHAs selection, among other things, will launch alongside of Story.

I'll be signing early copies of Story at Books of Wonder, during the New York City Teen Authors Festival, on Sunday, March 20.

I will be signing Story and Stolen (and possibly even Love: A Philadelphia Affair ) at Main Point Books, in honor of Independent Bookstore Day, at 2 PM.

I'd love to see you.

thoughts on it all, on Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day weekend, I write of long love in an era of tighter purse strings, a shared photography adventure, and wandering the streets of Conshohocken (and meeting one young entrepreneur, Marcie Spampinato, in a market fresh cafe) in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

I read Bettyville—that great George Hodgman memoir—through for the third time, as my class at Penn, joining with the students of dear Julia Bloch, prepare for a special Skype visit from the author. I first encountered Bettyville when reviewing the book for the Chicago Tribune. In returning to these pages, I find myself even more grateful for its championing of heart, its honesty of emotion, its embrace of sliding time, and its wisdoms, large and small. "To fall in love you have to think you're okay, stop watching for clues you've done something wrong."

I look toward a simple meal with the man I love.

These have been interesting days. I am learning how to live through uncertainty, find peace with broken promises, work toward the tangible in often intangible times, wrangle with dishonesties and pressures. I do less well when I survey the world at large—the posturing of politicians, the schoolyard antics of debates, the cruelty of regimes, the small voices that are not heard, the cracks in the earth. Three a.m. is my internal monologue-ing hour, and often nobody wins.

And then I remember to be grateful. For sun despite the frigid cold. For the laughter of my son over the phone. For the emails from friends who write of warming days, risotto, a mother's whisper, HelloFresh, encouragement for the books I write. For the team my father and I have become as we continue to hope for the sale of his home. For the orange roses that were waiting for me at five a.m. today, when I stopped talking to myself.

It's the small things, I think, that are the biggest things of all. The small things that sustain me, that break the monologue.

Some Conshohocken love, in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer

We had ourselves some romance in Conshohocken a few weeks ago.

I write of that here, in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer.

At the Farm: Five-day memoir workshop, coming this September

I have written here of our upcoming memoir workshops—Juncture Workshops—and friends, they are indeed coming. We have completed our visit to our first planned gathering place—a working Civil War era farm in central Pennsylvania. We have spent time with our hosts—an historian extraordinaire and his wonderful wife. We have slept in the Yetter cabin. We have walked the farm, talked to the peacocks, climbed up into the surrounding hills, watched the baby calf get loose from the barn.

We think it will be exceptional.

We're looking to launch this in the second week of September.

We are finalizing details and will be announcing more on this blog and on this site.

Anthony Lane on YA: a marketing wheeze

Every now and then, Anthony Lane, The New Yorker movie critic, will go in for the YA kill. He did it here, in his review of the movie "If I Stay," based on the Gayle Forman novel. And he did it again, just a few weeks ago, in his review of "The Fifth Wave."

I quote:

"The film is directed by J. Blakeson and adapted—though perhaps not adapted enough—from the novel by Rick Yancey. In other words, we are in the belly of young-adult fiction: a marketing wheeze dressed up as an art form...."

We have to hand it to Lane for the crisp cleverness of his phraseology. But I think we also have to ask: Is marketing wheeze how the YA category began, what it now is, what it is becoming, or simply an easy (outmoded) mode of attack?

The only way to defend this category from future Lane-isms is to write our stories unclassifiably well.

Miss Jane/Brad Watson: Reflections

I've written about Brad Watson here before.

I've told you the story—of how, through my first editor, W.W. Norton's Alane Mason, I began to hear this writer's name. How my dear friend Alyson Hagy, with whom Watson now teaches at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, has perpetuated the tales about his talent. How I have read his books myself, his essays, his interviews, and been grateful for the care he extends toward literature, the idea he seems to represent (and that he shares with Alyson) that, even today, in a world of quick and trending fiction, real literature rises.

Watson has a new book coming. It's called Miss Jane.

Friends, whomever you are, whatever you love, this one's for you. This one—the story of a young girl born with a genital difference in the early 20th century south—transcends all categories, will touch all hearts, will go down in history as a classic. I see no other way around it.

Inspired by Watson's own great-aunt, Miss Jane is the story of a child limited by her body and uncircumscribed by her heart. She discovers her own difference over time. She discovers it in parallel to discovering the beauty of things on the farm where she lives ("the burst of salty liquid from a plump and ice-cold oyster, the soft skins of wild mushrooms, the quick and violent death of a chicken, the tight and unopened bud of a flower blossom") and in the heart of the older doctor who treats her with kindness, adopts her as a near-daughter, and explains the facts of life—and the facts of her life—as simply as the truth allows. Jane will learn the art of aloneness. The art of forgiveness. The art of self-acceptance. She will have to starve herself in order to mask her terrible incontinence. She will have to say goodbye to a hope she has. She will have to live without physical intimacy, and yet—she will not live without love.

Watson's sentences are simpler here than they have been in his other work. His story streams. He takes the attention away from his own narrative self so as to give everything to Jane. It's the tenderness (without sentimentality) that I most admire here. The wait and the wrestling with the right scenes.

Paragraphs like these:

There were innumerable little faint trails her father said were game trails. Animal trails. Their faint presence like the lingering ghosts of the animals' passing. There was a particular little clearing she believed she had discovered, only her, filled with yellow sunlight on clear days, its long grass harboring primroses and wild sunflowers. A meadow she considered to be her very own, her place. The eyes of all the wild, invisible animals watching her. Time was suspended, or did not exist. She could linger there as long as she liked and when she returned from it no time had passed at all since she had stepped into the clearing and then awakened from it. That's what it was like.

The meadow did not exist if she wasn't in it.

Congratulations to Brad Watson. Congratulations to Alane, who, according to the book's acknowledgments, has waited a long time for this.

It was worth the wait.

The Home Collection/Looking Ahead to the Beltran Family Teaching Award Evening

In the early hours of this morning, I've been reviewing the final submissions to the Beltran Family Teaching Award chapbook—a collection of reflections on home by Penn students past and present; featured guests A.S. King, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Margo Rabb; and the leaders of Penn's Kelly Writers House.

Trust me, please. The words (and images) are stellar and binding. No piece remotely resembles another. Each reveals and, in ways both quiet and surprising, sears.

I have crazy ideas, that is true.

But when those who join us that evening—March 1, 6 PM, Kelly Writers House, all are welcome—hold this chapbook in their hands and hear our guests and look out upon these faces, this particular craziness will not seem so very crazy at all.

Because it's them.

And they have spoken.

A huge thank you to my generous husband, who has spent untold hours by my side, laying out these pages.

Ruta and Kelly are launching their books today

Perhaps the biggest perk of being in the book business, and of having lovely author friends, is that I sometimes get to read highly anticipated books early.

But today is the actual launch day for both Ruta Sepetys and Kelly Simmons, and so we need a little right-now hoopla.

My thoughts about Ruta and her book, Salt to the Sea, are here, in this vlog.

My thoughts about Kelly and her book, One More Day, are here, in this blog.

My love and congratulations and best wishes to you both!

New York City Teen Author Festival 2016: It's Live

No one is actually sure how David Levithan does it. Writes books that are both bestselling AND lauded. Edits books that define a generation of readers. AND coordinates the entirely generous New York City Teen Author Festival.

We don't know how.

But we're glad he does.

This year's festival is gonzo-sized. Check out the link to the full schedule here. I'll be attending for the very first time and how in the world I got this lucky, to be on this panel (below), I'll never know. (Well, I guess I could ask David, but I suspect he's busy.)

Consider me star struck.

March 18—42nd Street NYPL, South Court

4:40-5:30: Perspective (Part 1)
Explanation: What perspective do we, as adults, bring to our novels when we write about teenagers? How do we balance what we know and what our characters don’t? Why do we find ourselves revisiting these years, and what do we learn (even years later) by writing about them? How do you acknowledge the darkness without robbing the reader of finding any light? In this candid conversation, we’ll talk to four acclaimed authors about being an adult and writing about teenagers.

Beth Kephart
Carolyn Mackler
Luanne Rice
Francisco Stork
Moderator: David Levithan

I'll also be there, at the mega-signing, on Sunday, with first-ever copies of This Is the Story of You.

Join us?

five-day memoir workshops coming, summer of 2016

I have spoken here of our plan to launch five-day memoir workshops in beautiful, memorable places.

A working farm.

A seaside resort.

A lively river town.

Workshops that mean something—and deliver lasting value.

We're putting the final touches on all of that now. We're taking our final exploratory trips and designing the web site. We'll be launching that site in three weeks or so.

We just wanted you to know: it's coming.