Beth Kephart's Blog, page 321

New York City in the rain

All through the night, there's been rain and howling wind, and now, in the dark, I gather my things for a day trip to Wall Street.

I remember a day, years ago, when Kate Moses, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Camille Peri, and I were all headed uptown to give a reading from the Salon.com anthology, Mothers Who Think. Rain had overtaken Manhattan, and every subway stop was flooded through, and from stop to stop we ran, Reiko the transplanted New Yorker leading the way. We were to meet Jayne Anne Philli...

What they're saying (about Memoir, Neil Gaiman, and James Patterson)

I chose to spend my two stolen hours of the week not with The Girl with Glass Feet (a glorious-seeming book that I hope to finish reading during my train ride to Manhattan tomorrow), but with recent issues of The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Newsweek.

Or The Three News, as I think of them here at my house.

I have (and I'm more surprised by this than anyone else could be) written five memoirs and one autobiography of a river that is more memoiristic than a casual reader might guess. I the...

I Lived Here Once

We had moved from the rented house in the city—a trinity of three miniature rooms piled high. Come to Glenside, a place I'd never heard of, following a six-month search for something freelance dollars could buy. It was a gray house with worn carpets. It became bright blue and yellow and red, and those were the days when the mail men brought me my writing news. All those passed over short stories returned. Those rare, few yeses that became more yeses over time—short stories with homes in ...

Always There

Always looking.
Always wanting more.

Fusion Communications (the daytime me)

I am often asked what it is that I actually do: What is that daylight-hour work of which you speak? What do you mean, a boutique marketing communications firm?

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, and since we at Fusion recently assembled a few snapshots of projects completed over the past few years, I thought it would be fun to share that with you. In some cases we took the photos. In other cases we hired the right teams. Behind the words are long conversations about indus...

Second Semester, a few days on

Yesterday my son calls, full of news from his second semester, sophomore year. Every single class fits right, he says. He reports on the small details, the general themes, the meals squeezed in with friends. I learn, by virtue of him, about the strange fungus that fueled the odd behavior that led to the Salem Witch Trials. I get (secondhand) an insider's perspective on the business of TV. I hear about the high and low art of a recent film. He laughs through the retelling of some story t...

The Boy in the Yellow T-Shirt, Pulled Free

And then, last night, in the dark, they liberate a brother and his sister from the rubble of a store. They have survived the weight of what must have seemed the entire world for seven days. They have lived—what?—in darkness, in silence, in stopped time, in forever time, in the ultimate not knowing?

He is wearing a yellow T-shirt; he is a lantern of light. He opens his arms wide. I am alive.

Today, in an update letter from the International Rescue Committee, one of the organizations to which...

Visit me this Saturday, at the Barnes and Noble Educator Reception

I'll be joining three other guest authors at the Barnes and Noble, Jenkintown, PA, this Saturday from 2 PM to 4 PM as part of the Educator Reception. Pre-K through grade 12 educators are all invited for giveaways, refreshments, and conversation. Directions and details can be found here.

I'll have an ARC of The Heart is Not a Size with me as well as more information about Dangerous Neighbors. Copies of many of my books will be available throughout the store.

I'll try to tame my hair. About t...

The Day, Yielding

It doesn't matter how tired you are. An alive sky is a whole soul; it filters through you.

You look down, you think, I can't.

You look up, you say, I will.

Every day, no matter how jam-packed, no matter how disappointing, is a privilege.

Watermelon. Lilac. Gunmetal. Blue.

The crease of white.

Get the character moving

There I was (had for so long been): on page 44 of my Seville novel, stopped and going no further. The tone was working, the characters seemed alive, the momentum was building, and then, smack—I was up against a wall.

Page 44 was a misery. I couldn't move forward at all.

But yesterday a client canceled a conference call, and suddenly I had this gift of two unexpected hours in a day that had begun in a corporate rush at two a.m. Two hours, and even the construction crew down the street had st...