Beth Kephart's Blog, page 3

what I've been thinking about, this holiday season, in the Philadelphia Inquirer

Thoughts on remaining integral during a season of sometimes-chaos. In the Philadelphia Inquirer.

when you want so much for those who gather close to tell their stories

We have returned from Sea Change, our memoir writing workshop by the sea. And oh what a sea change it was—for us all.

Each time I leave a workshop I leave stunned and grateful for the honesty of those who have come—for their willingness to reach, then reach again. We experienced transformations this past week of a nearly unearthly kind. Writers who found their stories. Writers who found their words. Reporters who became poets. Entertainers who struck at our hearts. Badassery latticed up with tenderness...and then some.

I barely sleep during these intense days. I am, by the end, on the edge of myself, the edge of each story, the edge of each truth. Where there once was blood there runs only an urgent hope that those who have joined us write big, write more, live whole.

Like a gymnast, I bend in all directions—I stretch, I fold. Sometimes, off that balance beam, I fall. I try one more trick, take one more leap, jump, turn, catch my toe, miss. That's me, the Beth Kephart I don't even really know until I'm the only Beth Kephart I am.

At the close of this session, the writers offered me a gift—their words turned toward me. These words below are from Louise, who has joined us now three times. Louise, who has found both her story and her words. I share them because they are for all of us—all of us who teach, all of us who hope, all of us who dare to want so much for the people we (we have no choice) do love.

We are given such glorious reasons to love. These women. Oh. These women.

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so grateful for this essay in LitHub, on not vanishing our writing heroes

Quietly, determinedly, I have returned to the writing of essays. My pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer becoming ever more personal. My research for fiction yielding explorations of the truth (in Woven Tale Press). And, this past week, the publication of an essay long in the making in LitHub.

Finding my voice again. Slowly.

The LitHub essay stems from years of reading and wondering about Paul Horgan. From a trip my husband and I took out west. From a letter that was sent to me from Andrew Wyeth's nephew. From my wondering, often, what really remains of writers once they are gone. And why.

"Reclaiming a Beloved Writer from the Brink of Disappearance" can be found here.

Strangers in Budapest/Jessica Keener: reflections

I am of the age of accumulations. Impressions, dreams, realizations, friends. A clarified sense of the stuff of life that I willfully carry forward.

Jessica Keener is part of that accumulation—a photographer who posts bright blooming flower images on dark national days, a woman with whom I once sat eating cupcakes in a Boston shop, a writer whose books I have read, a friend with whom I talked long one Saturday at noon, me on my phone in my Pennsylvania study, she on her phone in her Boston.

I've written about Jessica and her books before. I've written about them here.

Today I'm writing about Jessica again because her second novel, Strangers in Budapest, is due out in less than a week, and good things are happening all around. The Chicago Review of Books and Real Simple have both named the novel an essential November read. The independent bookstores are ecstatic. Boston Magazine called Jessica's story "perfect page-turner for late autumn," while Publishers Weekly called the book "riveting" and "memorable."

I have risen at 3 AM these past few days to read Strangers in Budapest through. I'd heard some of the stories of its making, heard of Jessica's great gratitude for her agent and editor and publicist and early readers, heard Jessica speak of her relationship to this tale.

But every reader makes a story new and so I read this propulsive story about a young American couple in a sizzling-hot Budapest of 1995 with great eagerness to find out for myself just what is happening here. As the story opens, Annie, the wife, is becoming involved with an old man who is on the hunt for the man he believes married then murdered his wheelchair-bound daughter—and later absconded with her money. Annie has secrets of her own, and concerns about her husband's thus-far less-than-successful forays into Hungarian business opportunities. Chased by her own past, Annie wants to do good. But will good come from falling in with this old man's quest? And will Annie be culpable for the consequences?

The story moves quickly—the lives of seeming strangers soon entangling, the mysteries never black or white, the confusions amplified by a city of Gypsies and a melodic language and empty herringbone-floored apartments opening to remarkable (but historically compromised) views. Budapest of 1995 is no mere backwash in this novel. It is, in many ways, the engine—the devastating history, the east versus the west, the strange mayoral politics, the trade-offs and tarnish.

Jessica has written it all with the knowledge of one who did indeed live in Budapest years ago—as one who walked those floors and saw those monuments and watched those lights on the castle at night. She has written the novel authoritatively, I'm saying—a psychologically suspenseful, fast-moving story in which all the pieces and parts come movingly together.  

Strangers in Budapest is best read right now, when the chill in this November air will offset the heat on the pages.

life as editorial director of the nationally syndicated PBS arts and culture show, "Articulate with Jim Cotter"

Sometimes the very thing you were never looking for whips around the bend (it's windy that day, but there is sun) and finds you.

That is what happened a few weeks ago when Jim Cotter, the host of "Articulate with Jim Cotter," the nationally syndicated, Emmy® award-winning PBS arts and culture show, invited me to join his team as editorial director.

I'd been a guest on the show a few years ago. I'd attended a recent concert filming. I'd written a story about that experience for my monthly Philadelphia Inquirer column, and it was after that—before the Inky story even ran—that Jim asked if I'd meet him at a local coffee shop.

I had no idea what he wanted, but I said yes.

Since that day I've been saying yes to a lot of things. To scanning the arts horizon in search of innovators and storytellers whose ideas and ideals challenge (or affirm) the way we view our lives. To thinking about the processes that guide and fuel the work of writers, producers, shooters, animators, digitalists, and others. To learning how to write scripts so that I can teach the writing of scripts (how's that for rapid conversion?). To reaching out to those who know people who know ... who know. To sneaking books into the office, and possibilities—passages on the art of the essay, reviews of an author whose work deeply counts, tales of a musician with a story to tell. To learning from an uber fab executive producer (Tori Marchiony), a you-haven't-met-efficient/resourceful-until-you meet-her operations manager (Constance Kaita), and, of course, Jim himself.

It's been a deep immersion of a month. Here's what I already know: On the upper floors of an old mansion on Walnut Street there works and breathes a troupe (I'll use that word, for this is a cast of which I speak, this is theater within theater) of remarkably interesting people doing remarkably interesting work. They're out there talking to MacArthur geniuses and Pulitzer Prize winners, Daniel Handler and Gene Yang, Joyce Didonato and Jennifer Higdon, Watsky and Lisa Hannigan, Mark Mothersbaugh and Ani DiFranco, Andrew W.K. and Lauren Greenfield, Elizabeth Streb and, just this week (I was there, she was cool), the rising indie singer-songwriter Julien Baker.

Chances are that you can see the show on your local PBS station. If not, you can watch every segment here, at your leisure, at any time of restless day or sleepless night. Or join the Facebook page, here, where you'll get updates on segments, special treats, and all kinds of trivia with which to impress your friends.

And when you're sending me notes and I'm behind answering it's because, well, of this. I think it's a pretty fair trade—me sharing the show in exchange for me disappearing for stretches at a time. The show is more vivid, vibrant, and wow than I will ever be.

Wow. Did I say wow? Check out this

Juncture Notes 20: a conversation with Inara Verzemnieks

I could not be more honored. The exquisite memoirist Inara Verzemnieks joins us in conversation for this issue of Juncture Notes.

Anyone who cares about life, about seeing, about love should stop and read what Inara has to say. She took the time and went deep.

It's all here.

Celebrating life as viewed through the lens of art, on this Emmy-winning PBS show, "Articulate with Jim Cotter"

Two or so years ago I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting with Jim Cotter to talk about truth, life, Philadelphia, the students I love—all of it—for his PBS show, "Articulate." Later I set off with his magnificent crew for B-Roll footage, but really: I only wanted to watch, to see how hoverboards, drones, and a lot of really nice people could turn a middle-aged woman into a story. The entire team's incredible care and craft, the expressed interest in making enduring art, stayed with me. The show featuring my segment, released a few months later, has remained a highlight of my career.

"Articulate" has evolved since then, inviting guests like Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket fame, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, Lady Gaga's hat maker, Arturo Rios, and singer songwriter Lisa Hannigan into the studio or under the lights. For anyone who hopes to turn on the TV (or the internet) and find the reprieve of interesting talk, artful hope, and cinematic beauty (I don't know of any other arts show that is so beautifully produced), I strongly urge you to find Articulate.

I wrote about the experience of returning to "Articulate" and sitting in its audience at a live taping for this week's Philadelphia Inquirer story, which can be found here.

Sudden Annealing on a Day of Dark Rain: A Poem

Sudden Annealing On A Day of Dark Rain


All day in search of a poem to allege the hoursLived or measured. With my back set against the wallOf rain and my mind divided: Inquisitor.  Interrogated. Nothing. Not even the thunderIs something.  Not even the buds of rain On the naked trees that might have been opals Are something until, from another room Behind my room, the song you’re playing, Some indication of guitar, an offhandKindness. Like yesterday when I recognized A tenderness in you accepting the small stuffed Bear a child offered for no one else’s sake.

Reunion: a Beth Kephart poem

Cleaning out file drawers, I find this poem, crushed between corporate projects. The story of my life, perhaps.

Reunion

Later, above the Thimble Islands,
lightning hooks the ghosts of buccaneers
and pirates.

You can see the ghosts hanging in the wind,
the shag hems of their trousers unraveling
in the channel,
treasure the color of kerosene
at their feet,
their women howling at the winter
seals caught in the cove.

Dry heaves of light,
and then the gloaming.
Leader and streamer,
and then the hooked sky,
and the ghosts in the hook of the sky.
No rain yet.
Rain coming.

Before this you had been standing
on the falling down
part of the hill.
You had been laughing.
Twenty years, someone said,
And no one's changed.

Manhattan Beach/Jennifer Egan: My Chicago Tribune Review

Devastated as we all are by the unending cycle of brutal news, I keep turning back to books—to the very best of books.

The ones with heart and soul, the proof of generous, curious, receiving minds.

Last week I had the opportunity to read Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach, an historical novel of surpassing... everything. My rave review, in the Chicago Tribune, is here.