Beth Kephart's Blog, page 41

let's talk about LOVE: my video interview with Gary Kramer of Temple University Press

What a pleasant thing it was to travel to the city, to meet my friend and Temple Press publicist Gary Kramer for an extended stroll through favorite places, and to be introduced to Dan Marcel, a talented videographer, photographer, and film maker, who created two separate videos.

This is my interview with Gary, about the making of Love: A Philadelphia Affair, which will launch in early September and which I'll be celebrating on the Free Library of Philadelphia stage with Marciarose Shestak on October 7, at 7:30. Please consider joining us there.

A second video, which I'll post here soon, provides a partial city tour, as well as brief readings from the book.

Dan Marcel is a marvel—well-named, I've said. You can find out more about Marcelevision Media here; I highly recommend him. In my next post, I'll be introducing you to his mother, Susan, who wrote and performed the music that underpins the second brief film.

Gary Kramer (who is not just Temple's publicist but a powerhouse film critic, a Salon.com writer, a Bryn Mawr Film Institute lecturer, among other things):. You made this happen and I could talk to you forever. Thank you.
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Published on August 24, 2015 10:33

Chronicle, you make beautiful books. Thank you.

Two weeks ago I shared the absolutely gorgeous cover for This Is the Story of You—my novel due out from Chronicle next April. It's a beach novel and a mystery. A survival story and a tale of friendship and a lost sisterhood.

Last night, after a long day, I was sitting on the couch in a form of melt when dear Taylor Norman, Chronicle editor, sent along the final PDF file for the book's ARC.

Friends, it's beautiful. Carefully considered, page by page. Remarkably built. Accompanied by friends. (A.S. King and Patty McCormick, you're here with me.) And also — a most moving and welcome surprise — a gorgeous reader letter from Ginee Seo, Children's Publishing Director.

The package, the letter, the care, the assurance that my friends with travel with me down this path—Chronicle, you make some of the most beautiful books in this business. I'm so proud to have traveled to Berlin, then to Florence, and now to the Jersey Shore with you.

Thank you.

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Published on August 19, 2015 04:40

Reviewing Julianna Baggott's Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders (New York Journal of Books)

A very happy publication day to Julianna Baggott and her immensely wonderful Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders. Baggott spent years getting this book right, she has explained in interviews. Her dad helped with research, her acknowledgments say. And anyone who has witnessed Baggott in social media knows her heart is always in the right place. Her mind, too.

My review in full is here.

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Published on August 18, 2015 15:25

I'm starting from scratch, I said. Isn't that wonderful, she answered

I'm starting from scratch, I told a friend the other day. She on her phone, me on mine. I had walked a few miles during our conversation. We'd traveled to Montana and back in time, through clay work and literature, through architecture and family woe, and now I was still walking and we were still talking, and I said, J: I'm starting from scratch.

I meant that I had been sent back to very birth of things in my art and my career. That everything was a very brand new. That nothing was sure, nothing was predestined, I had no sure writing home, no sure writing brand, nothing sure at all, except the stories in my head.

It's like I never published before, I said.

Isn't that wonderful, she answered.

Isn't that wonderful. Starting over, starting fresh, taking nothing for granted, asking questions I haven't asked for twenty years. Twenty-one books are twenty-one books, but I dwell in the here and now. I make for the sake of making. I push (can push) too far. And where I am, and how it's been—I'm starting all over again.

Isn't that wonderful.

Yes, J. It is. I am afraid, I am raw, I don't know, I'm on my own, and it is wonderful. It is brave and uneasy and I'm alive with it, alert to it, figuring it out. Again.

Yes, J. It is.

But so are you, for saying so. And so all the many friends who have accompanied me in this summer of questions, of starting over again. I stepped back and took it slow. You've been there. I thank you.

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Published on August 16, 2015 17:13

when an innovative approach to the page becomes a suspect tic (David Foster Wallace)

I went to see "The End of the Tour," the David Foster Wallace film. I knew that, in some ways, I should not have been there. That Wallace's family vigorously opposed the film, gave no permission, did not want this famously private self to be re-enacted.

I respect that.

And. I was engaged, moved, saddened, heartened as I sat there in a packed theater watching the film. What a man, what a mind, what tender nuance was he. That bandana and those dogs. His wanting to be accurate, not shaped, not distorted by his bitter Rolling Stone interviewer, David Lipsky. His desire to live free of the self-doubt that accompanies both fame and obscurity.

This morning, in the wake of that cinematic experience, I read as much as I could about Wallace's widow, Karen Green—her art, her writing, her memoir. Having watched the film I felt it necessary to balance me out with her words.

Inside a Guardian interview, I was returned to Wallace himself, to words written to Jonathan Franzen in a 2005 email. Here Wallace is talking about the difficulty of writing past the known beats and grammar. Of continuously going out to a new edge so that one does not repeat oneself. His words brought to mind all the writers I've read who burst onto the scene with something new, refine that new over the next few books (if they are that lucky, few are), and then begin to tread the same water, return to the same tricks, become a parody of themselves, become (I have used this word a lot this summer, for I've reflected, perhaps too much, on all I've seen) a brand.

That's it, right? How do writers not become a parody of themselves? How do they avoid getting locked into their own deliberate constructions?

Wallace, who had so much to teach us, was thinking about that here:

"Karen is killing herself rehabbing the house. I sit in the garage with the AC blasting and work very poorly and haltingly and with (some days) great reluctance and ambivalence and pain. I am tired of myself, it seems: tired of my thoughts, associations, syntax, various verbal habits that have gone from discovery to technique to tic. It's a dark time workwise, and yet a very light and lovely time in all other respects."

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Published on August 16, 2015 05:43

recent kiln work

Bill threw these pots. I glazed them. A happy collaboration.

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Published on August 13, 2015 08:24

writers: let us improve upon our caricatures

"Author tours should not be confused with the rock-and-roll variety. Where bands face a baying throng in a cavernous stadium, writers drone through random chunks of their work at the rear of provincial bookstores, signing copies in the faint hope that the newly enhanced volumes will not appear on eBay before breakfast."

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, reviewing "The End of the Tour"

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Published on August 11, 2015 05:31

Barefoot to Avalon: A Brother's Story. My thoughts in NY Journal of Books

I had the pleasure of reviewing Barefoot to Avalon, David Payne's memoir about the loss of a beautiful brother who faced the demons of Bipolar I, for the New York Journal of Books. Payne's brother was the blessed one, the favored one, a young man much loved. When he dies helping the author move his belongings to a new southern home, Payne is left with the past—sifting clues, pushing beyond old hurts, admonishing himself for not paying closer attention.

It's a knotty, layered, intricate read. It is compelling and urgent. A reminder of the terrible power of mental unwellness and lost chances.

My complete review is here.

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Published on August 11, 2015 03:39

F. Scott Fitzgerald Comes to Stay

I've been in love with this guy for a very long time.

He has lived at my parents' stately home for many years.

Last night he came to live with me.

With you looking over my shoulder, F. Scott, I will try and I will try.

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Published on August 08, 2015 09:04

the writer in the world: an interview

A few months ago I was very privileged to share an excerpt from a work-in-progress (an "adult" story) with Clockhouse, the beautiful new literary magazine. Recently, Heather Leah Huddleston, a key member of the Goddard community, asked if I might agree to a follow-on interview. Of course, I said, to this very dear and talented soul.

And so, today, that interview goes live. I'm talking about the difference between writing for adults and teens, the frustrations I've faced, the stuff I don't do well, and the life choices I make, on a daily basis.

It's all here.

Thank you, Heather. And thanks, too, to Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, one of my dearest friends in this wide world, who first bridged me to Heather and to Goddard. Reiko lives in Brooklyn. I live where I live. Even so, sometimes, like just yesterday, I take a walk, dial her number, and live in her company for a glorious while. A true forever friend.