Beth Kephart's Blog, page 362

UNDERCOVER paperback release contest update

For those of you who took the time to enter your poetry into the Undercover paperback release contest, let me first say this: I am awed and grateful. Your poems have been carefully read and sorted, and this week, Jill Santopolo, senior editor at HarperTeen, will be reading the semi-finalist slate. As soon as I have news, I will announce it here.[image error]

The Solder of Limb Shade: A Mother's Day Poem

Where you are is not
where you are,
beneath the granite bench
and the heart-footed deer,
under cover, under the solder
of limb shade.

You are not sunk you are not skidded past
by wind.
You are not level, rise, diaspora, root,
nor the chime, pretty as it is,
above the stone field and its tulips.
But once, in a restaurant,
they played your song,
and the house that I have built from almost nothing
is hung about with birds.

You gave your final word
to me.
You said.
You are.
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Finches, Ghosts, and Writing about our Mothers

At the close of his review of Nothing but Ghosts, Ed Goldberg P.S.ed: And what/who is that finch that keeps pecking at Katie’s bedroom window? I have my ideas!

The finch of which Mr. Goldberg speaks is ever present, introduced in the book's second sentence:

There are the things that have been and the things that haven't happened yet. There is the squiggle of a line between, which is the color of caution, the color of the bird that comes to my window every morning, rattling me awake with the hamm

Hummingbird Fantasy

In Siena, in a garden, there were hummingbirds. At Chanticleer, they are suspendered from the air. Once, last year, at Adam's house, they helicoptered in while Adam and I spoke of Philadelphia history and writer dreams.

I've wanted hummingbirds. I've hung a glass feeder, filled it with sugar juice. I've planted a trumpet vine and arranged bright flowers beneath the nest that the robin has built in my rafters.

I've wanted hummingbirds, and yesterday, while slicing zucchini, thick, I looked up t

Nothing but Ghosts: The YAbookcentral.com Review

Today it stormed, then it stopped, then it rained while the sun streamed down, and during part of this fury I was dancing. I was freeing my mind of all the worries that crawl in and threaten to stay, save for when there is music.

And now I've come home to sun and to the loveliest note from Ed Goldberg of YAbookscentral, who has given Nothing but Ghosts a most exquisite, thoughtful, meaningful review. I excerpt from just the final paragraphs here, encouraging you to travel over to the site, wher

Horace Kephart Day

May 1st was Horace Kephart day in Bryson City, NC, and my brother who, as the sole male of this generation, carries our last name forward, was there among cousins, librarians, enthusiasts, and scholars to commemorate this author-naturalist-woodsman who, among other things, penned Our Southern Highlanders and contributed to the preservation of the Great Smoky Mountains with the creation of the national park. I have written about my great-grandfather, not just on this blog, but in the pages of Ti

Nothing but Ghosts and The No Such Thing Contest

On Melissa Walker's big week (Lovestruck Summer is now out in stores!), Melissa is being utterly Melissa, which is to say supremely generous. Today I'm over at her blog, telling the story of the Nothing but Ghosts cover, with additional photos of Chanticleer, the garden that inspired this novel. Thank you, so much, Melissa. I can't wait to drift away into your own Lovestruck space.

In the meantime, Jill Santopolo has informed me that the No Such Thing short story competition details have now b

My Natural State

Behind us the sun fell, and all that night, as we drove, I waited for the moon—scanned the skies as the music played, looking for a sliver. Rain fell. Rain stopped. We were the only car on the road. The lights of a city came into view, and then they vanished, and we were alone again, moonless.

My natural state, I have decided, is yearning. When all is quiet, when the child sleeps, my heart is scribbled with want.[image error]

Goodness (again), a Contest Update, and Kudos to Melissa Walker

Forgive me for being a tad emotional this morning. The last time I posted a world-goes-streaking-past photograph, it was the morning after the evening that we'd left our son at school—a freshman at a college hours away, a young man on the verge.

Yesterday, downpours and client pressures couldn't keep us away from that guy. His finals were done, and his room was in order; freshman year is done. Our son comes home with broader shoulders, boundless stories, and a multitude of friends—engaging, tr

Experimental Fictions

For those of you who have never gone to a Rahna Reiko Rizzuto reading or enrolled in one of her classes, she's a knock-out green-eyed Italian/Irish-Japanese astrophysics-trained novelist/memoirist who was born in Honolulu and has made the world her home (and left the world with, among other things, Why She Left Us, the novel that won an American Book Award). She's also one of my dearest friends, and every now and then a package will arrive with Reiko's writing scrawled across the front. Saturd