Beth Kephart's Blog, page 6

Read Juncture Notes 16 here: behind the scenes of the illustrated workbook and exquisite interview with essayist Megan Stielstra

In this issue of Juncture Notes, which can be read in its entirety here, we are privileged to have Megan Stielstra's thoughts on writing, teaching, and the many stories that bind us. Reading this interview, with its many turns and links, will give you a summer's worth of musings...and a very good reason to buy her new collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life.

We also go behind the scenes, in this issue, to take a look at our brand-new memoir workbook, Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. , a collaborative content/illustration/design project, and something we are excited to announce has already been adopted into a high school curriculum.

Thanks to my husband, Bill, for the drawing above; it also appears in the workbook.

Imagining an Empathy Project in Every Community: In this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer

Shortly after Bill and I returned from our Juncture memoir workshop in Frenchtown, PA, I wrote here about the Empathy Project that had found its way into the heart of that very special community.

I couldn't stop thinking about it all. About the writers I love and about those we'd met. About the possibilities that inhere in listening. And so I thought out loud again about the project for the pages of this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer. 

I share that link here. I ask the open question: What would happen if communities across this country (this world) orchestrated their own Empathy Projects?

With thanks, as always, to the Inquirer's Kevin Ferris, for all the ways he allows me to explore the passions that define and shape me. (And for including a link to Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. That makes me happy, too.)

Tell the Truth. Make It Matter.

A few days ago I shared some of the interior pages of a memoir workbook long in the making here at Juncture.

Today I am happy to announce that the book is launched. It can be ordered here.

In Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. Beth Kephart offers an insider’s look at the
making of true tales—and an illustrated workbook to guide the wild ride. Combining smartly selected samples with abundantly fresh ideas, dozens of original exercises with cautions, questions with answers, Kephart inspires, encourages, and persistently believes in those with a story to tell.

Write this, Truth says. Read this. Consider this. Discover who you are. Have some honest fun with words.

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> <span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There are questions here about the lives we've led: <i>What do we remember about our first lie? What have we learned from disappointment? Why can’t we remember? Why can’t we forget? What do we know about umbrellas?</i> There are thoughts about the crafting of stories, the discovery of voice, and the development of universal themes. There are quotes and hints and exercises and words from some of today’s leading memoir practitioners. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There's room to write and draw. </span><br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is reflective. Sometimes it goes big and sometimes small. It's progressive, one exercise building into the next, toward one truth and then another.</span><br /><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">We hope you'll be as excited as we are.</span><div class="feedflare">
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Michael Bloomberg rescues American dignity. Georgina Bloomberg rides at Devon.

Yesterday the Washington Post (among others) reported that Michael Bloomberg flew to Paris to assure the United Nations that, in the absence of U.S. presidential leadership, Americans would keep their commitment to our planet.

From the story:

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has promised to provide up to $15 million in funding that he says the United Nations will lose because of President Trump’s decision to pull out from the landmark Paris climate deal.

The billionaire’s charitable organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, on Thursday pledged to shoulder the United States’ share in the operating costs of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the organization’s climate negotiating body in charge of helping developing countries fulfill environmental requirements under the 2015 pact.

“Americans are not walking away from the Paris Climate Agreement. Just the opposite — we are forging ahead,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “Mayors, governors, and business leaders from both political parties are signing onto a statement of support that we will submit to the UN — and together, we will reach the emission reduction goals that the U.S. made in Paris in 2015.”

Bloomberg was speaking on behalf of all of those Americans, the great majority of Americans, who recognize that we can't put up walls and live fiefdoms. We share this world, this air, this water. Climate change is real.

Downcast by so much of the news, Bill and I went to the Devon Horse Show last night, where Georgina Bloomberg, the former mayor's daughter, has been a frequent guest. In a field of 37 horses, she earned jump-off round status and a yellow ribbon, one of which she gave to a child in the crowd. Rooting for her, I was also rooting for her father, and for all of those who are standing up and saying, No. America can still be great because American citizens are.

This is Georgina, above. I was lucky to have a standing spot right at the gate.

Juncture Notes 15: Read the whole newsletter here

We're happy to offer a link to the full issue of Juncture Notes 15, featuring reflections on Frenchtown, NJ, a conversation with Kristen Radtke (IMAGINE WANTING ONLY THIS), and the work of our readers here.

Let's talk about texture (Christopher Bollen/The Destroyers)

A few days ago I sat in this little abode of mine with a friend I'll call C. She is a world-explorer and a writer, a teacher and a reader, and in my house of many books we were talking about something she calls "texture." The size and shape of sentences. The divots, pivots, pauses. The just enough and the artfully original.

There are many books that simply deliver the research and plot.

And then there are the books that rattle around in our heads because the language is like a lip of sun upon an active sea.

I was thinking about that conversation today as I read Christopher Bollen's new literary thriller, The Destroyers, a book sent my way by that extraordinary publicist, Michael Taekens (seriously, this man is something). I'd had a long week of reading for review and blog commentary (some 2,200 pages, perhaps more). I wasn't sure if my mind was capable of more words. And then I read Bollen's prologue.

Check this out:

The Greek island of Patmos was a wheeze of color: bleach-blond dust, scrub brush of wiry green, the wet-metal shine of water, and low rock walls blooming sinus pinks. As Elise ascended a hill she saw the monastery rise from the cliffs like a cruise ship moored on a mountaintop. Human bodies sere scattered along the beaches, silver and limp in the sticky heat.

Wheeze of color.

Bleach-blond dust.

Blooming sinus pinks.

Like a cruise ship moored on a mountaintop.

In none of this does Bollen appear to be reaching. This isn't decorative writing. It isn't overloaded, overlong. One has the sense that this is simply how that landscape would be received, by any one of us sufficiently detached from ordinary comparators and beats.

What ensues, in this novel, is a story of young men with childhood ties who depend on one another until the rich one disappears. Vanishes. Must be found. There are war games in these characters' pasts and many plot twists as the story unfolds. But time and again, in the fury of the plot, Bollen waits for language.

Thank you, Mr. Bollen, for caring so much about language.

Literary thriller, and the "literary" isn't just a marketing label here. It's real. It's texture.

Ellen Umansky and The Fortunate Ones

Maybe every story is a detective story. The essential unknown. The equivocal mystery. The thing that must be found out. Somebody knows something. Somebody's asking. Somebody isn't saying (has forgotten, feels immune, needs to hide, is gone). Until.

I was thinking about this as I read Ellen Umansky's debut novel, The Fortunate Ones. The story blends the echoes of the Nazi era and its kindertransport survivors with the lives of two recently orphaned grown-up sisters in modern-day Los Angeles. The binding element is a Chaim Soutine painting, which was lost by Austrian family, sold in the United States, then lost again by those two sisters. Rose, born in Austria, meets Lizzie Goldstein, one of those Los Angeles sisters, at the funeral of Lizzie's father. In the ensuing friendship many questions are asked about the painting, called "The Bellhop," that bent the trajectories of both families.

Where is that painting now?

What did that painting mean?

Who is hiding the truth?

Constructed with greatest care, The Fortunate Ones invites its readers to consider the place of objects in family history, the changeable qualities of a fixed canvas, the infringements of guilt upon life choices, and the power people have (but, tragically, often fail to use) to vanquish the unnecessary guilt in others. More important, the novel demonstrates the appeasements of friendship and the relationships that can still thrive between people who see within the other a place of hope and truth.

Umansky moves her story back and forth over time. Dialogue escalates the momentum, while Lizzie's relationships with Rose and with her own sister, Sarah, cradle the emotional tensions. Umansky's research into this painter, Soutine, infuses the story. "The Bellhop" is an imagined canvas within the real-life painter's oeuvre.

This is how we first encounter it, in the book's opening pages:

The boy in the painting was not pretty. He was too skinny in his red uniform, his face pasty and elongated. The paint was thick, thrown on; it looked as if the painter couldn't be bothered to slow down and pay attention. Rose didn't understand why her mother loved it so.

But we, the readers, come to understand. We come to see, over the course of the novel, that painting: vivid and alive.

Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. (cover reveal)

A few days ago I shared some of the interior pages of a memoir workbook long in the making here at Juncture.

Today I share the cover and the promotional copy:

In Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. Beth Kephart offers an insider’s look at the
making of true tales—and an illustrated workbook to guide the wild ride. Combining smartly selected samples with abundantly fresh ideas, dozens of original exercises with cautions, questions with answers, Kephart inspires, encourages, and persistently believes in those with a story to tell.

Write this, Truth says. Read this. Consider this. Discover who you are. Have some honest fun with words.

Truth could not come from a more authoritative source—Beth Kephart, who, as
an award-winning writer of 23 books, an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, a winner of the 2013 Books for a Better Life Award (motivational category) for Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, a nationally renowned speaker, and a partner in Juncture Writing Workshops, has mastered the art of leading readers and writers toward the stories of themselves.

Truth should find a home among high school teachers, college professors, workshop leaders, autodidacts, secret writers and public ones. It is the perfect (graduation, birthday, holiday, friendship) gift—to others, and to oneself.

We expect the book to go live on Amazon in approximately two weeks. I'll provide the link then.

Introducing a new (beautifully illustrated) memoir workbook

Over the past two years, I've been writing a memoir workbook—a page-by-page introduction to the form enriched by prompts designed to lead you directly into the heart of your story.

(Not idle prompts. Not prompts as afternoon distractions. Prompts that teach the form and open doors to memory and meaning. This workbook is supplemental to Handling the Truth. It does not repeat it.)

Over the past many months, Bill has been designing and illustrating those pages, crafting a book that complements our five-day memoir workshops, our monthly (content rich) memoir newsletter, and, soon, on-line courses at Juncture.

Tell the Truth. Make It Matter. will soon be available through Amazon.

I'm so happy to share two spread previews from different chapters in this 210-page book here.

The Frenchtown Empathy Project: The Power of Trust in a Broken World

Over the past many months, as our country has veered toward and sometimes cemented divisions and oppositions, Bill and I have been building the Frenchtown Empathy Project, an event that hoped for, in fact depended on, trust among perfect strangers.

We were bringing our Juncture memoir writers to this New Jersey town for five intense days of reading, writing, and growing. We were adding to their enormous workload (they'll tell you) another layer by asking them to search for connections in the community we'd chosen as our host.

Lynn Glickman, a memoirist expert in delineating the colors and temptations of a kitchen, was paired with Julie Klein, a Frenchtown chef (Lovin' Oven).

Starr Kuzak, a memoirist with music in her DNA and tenderness in her soul, was paired with Carolyn Gadbois, a drummer and espresso artist.

Hannah Yoo, a memoirist seeking (and finding) forgiveness for a wrong committed against her father, was paired with Bonnie Pariser, a yoga instructor.

Christine O'Connor, a deeply engaged political thinker and writer, was paired with Mayor Brad Myhre.

Louise O'Donnell, a memoirist who has retail community in her history and a love of all things people in her heart, was paired with the owner of town central, otherwise known as the hardware store (Mike Tyksinski).

Elana Lim, a memoirist whose family history is now on display in a Smithsonian-affiliated museum, was paired with the co-creator of a community theater program (Keith Strunk), while Tracey Yokas, who is not just writing about seeing her daughter (and herself) through a crushing chapter in both their lives but was also once an above-the-line producer for shows like the Oscars and the Emmys, was paired with the theater's other co-creator (Laura Swanson).

Jessica Gilkison, a memoirist writing about the wisdom we find as we lose a mother and parent a fluid, truth-seeking child, was paired with the creator of Real Girls (Catherine Lent).

I, meanwhile, had the opportunity to talk about gifts and gift giving with Meg Metz, who created and curates one of the finest stores anywhere (Modern Love), where the door really is always open.

Bill and I could not have created this project without enormous help, of course. Caroline Scutt of the Book Garden stepped in and made lists of people and sent emails when we presented our scheme. Catherine Lent and Keith Strunk made suggestions. Those we contacted said yes to a project that, by any standard, was utterly untested. They agreed to be interviewed by people they didn't know and to have their lives retold by voices that, well: Who were these people? All in advance of an outcome no one could predict.

Would our writers get it right? Would anyone come to the reading at Town Hall? Would this empathy mission, this bridge building, fall flat on its face? Would our theory about the power of listening and the integrity of reaching beyond one's own self be confirmed or shattered? Nerves were expressed. Bill and I shook our heads in quiet midnight anticipation. And then, Thursday morning as the writers rehearsed in the lobby of our home base, Pete and Marlon's National Hotel, I knew, as well as I've ever known anything, that something magic was about to go down.

It did. Frenchtown's Town Hall on Thursday night was jammed. Our writers were flawless. Our audience was leaning in. This odd thing we'd called the Frenchtown Empathy Project, this hope we'd had to build bridges in a time of fragments: it worked. It just worked. We all sat there. We listened. We knew.

Here is our Mike, in a note to us yesterday:

... Last night or actually this week has been a transformative experience for me and others here in Frenchtown. I spent time sharing who I am with a complete stranger as did several others, who then took some of my stories, got up and spoke as me in front of a room full of people some I knew and some I didn't. I sat between the Mayor and my neighbor Doug. The emotional impact on the room was surreal. It was as if we all became kindred souls through the sharing of ourselves. Oh by the way Louise my writer chose to include naked curry. The room was in stitches.

We build community one person by one person, one listening stranger by one vulnerable soul.

Truth is this.

 [A PS thank you to Brenda and Officer Titen, who made sure the doors were open for us.]