Beth Kephart's Blog, page 346

A Ghosts review

The white cat has not been seen since its one long hour near my side. Was she a ghost, I wonder? A spirit? I looked for her earlier on this wickedly hot day while I snapped the weeds from the garden, tamed the trumpet vine. She was nowhere. Not even the float of fur, or the one blue eye.

When I returned to my desk, there was a sweet note from Lauren of Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf, who has lately spent some time with my ghosts. Her gracious review of Nothing but Ghosts is here. Lauren, it's

Torn Photograph, Sepia Stained: The El Salvador Memoir

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In preparing to teach the advanced nonfiction course at Penn, I read and re-read and remember. I re-enter the mind-space that took me here, to the first page of my Salvador memoir, Still Love in Strange Places.

The tear runs like a river through a map, hurtling down toward his right shoulder, veering threateningly at his neck, then diverting south only to again pivot east at the fifth brass button of his captain's uniform. Below the tear, two more brass but

I Sit Here

...feeling overwhelmed by all I want to teach, all I want to do, still, with my life.

Perfect Memoirs

I've been trawling through a part of my own history this weekend—through file folders stuffed with xeroxed passages, quotes, and lecture notes, with old book reviews and essays, with pitched-forward questions. I wanted to see, as I prepare to teach at the University of Pennsylvania this fall, just what I'd once been thinking. I wanted to measure my progress since then.



The exercise is bittersweet. It involves recalling books that I could not live without—but have, for a decade of more. It e

Persephone Books: The Beautiful and the Bold

I've been somewhat crazy busy with work since returning from those few days by the sea, but I love what I do (most of the time), and more than that, I love the people I get to do my work with.

This week brought me back into touch with old friends at a client that has long felt, to me, like family. It found me laughing so hard in one interviewee's office that I almost fell off the chair; philosophizing over the phone with another about what makes for an engaged employee; and getting a second-han

Leave the Book Be; Return to it in a New Season

The best thing that we can do for our books-in-progress is to let them be for a long while—to return to them in a new season, with a fresh eye. This is what I will now be doing with Dangerous Neighbors, my Centennial novel due out from Egmont next fall. The book has been in the hands of my trusted editor, Laura Geringer, for a spell. It's been safe with her. Percolating. Late last night she sent along her thoroughly well-considered notes. Think about this, she says. Consider that.

It is ti

On Interviewing Others

The day began with a 6:30 AM conference call, ended with five additional interviews, filled two new pads of paper with notes, and featured a stunning, it-had-me downpour.

Now dinner is in the oven, and the sun is out and sinking, and I am thinking how grateful I am for that slipping-away moment, earlier today, when I went to the gym to dance Zumba. Sure, I didn't have time for it, but I went out and off anyway, for sometimes the only way that I can succeed in a jam-packed-think-day is to dance

Web Weaving

For three and a half days she stayed precisely where she was—either trapped by her own snare, or guarding it.

Which is it with us?

In the Company of Stars

There's a spark in the children's lit air and her name is Elizabeth Law (her title, by the way, is VP and Publisher, Egmont USA). She's being talked about and interviewed in many places and, from what I'm hearing from friends like Sherrie, Elizabeth's keynote address at SCBWI-LA was exquisite—empowering and enlightening. This is the same Elizabeth Law who stopped by, unexpectedly, to a book chat sponsored by My Friend Amy, on behalf of Nothing but Ghosts. Amy is a book blogger Elizabeth follo

Opening Doors for Younger Readers

At Chasing Ray, Colleen Mondor is doing what she does so very well—forcing us to think hard about the big things. Her post is titled "How to recommend a book written by and/or about a person of color (POC)" and, with her typical intelligence, she parses the issues, concluding, "If we want to fully integrate publishing—if we want to make bookstores places that only have an African American section in the context of history...then we need to depart from the impression that minority books can ever