Beth Kephart's Blog, page 70

One Thing Stolen: the cover reveal

So much love and thought and artistry has gone into the cover for the Florence novel that will be released next April from Chronicle Books. My deep thanks to everyone who read this story, who cared about its characters, who thought out loud about every option, and who put their art and magical way of seeing on the page. Particular thanks to Kristine Brogno of Chronicle Books, whose work is so wholly representative of the story itself, described below. And thanks, as ever, to Tamra Tuller, my editor, who saw this project through with conviction and heart. Thanks, finally, to my Penn students—Katie Goldrath and Maggie Ercolani—who inspired two primary characters in this novel, and who inspire me, still, and to Gregory Djanikian, who is in these pages, too.

Something is not right with Nadia Cara.

She’s become a thief. She has secrets. And when she tries to speak, the words seem far away. After her professor father brings her family to live in Florence, Italy, Nadia finds herself trapped by her own obsessions and following the trail of an elusive Italian boy whom no one but herself has seen. While her father researches a 1966 flood that nearly destroyed Florence, Nadia wonders if she herself can be rescued—or if she will disappear.

Set against the backdrop of a glimmering city, One Thing Stolen is an exploration of obsession, art, and a rare neurological disorder. It is about language and beauty, imagining and knowing, and the deep salvation of love.

One Thing Stolen was born of Beth Kephart’s obsession with birds, nests, rivers, and floods, as well as her deep curiosity about the mysteries of the human mind. It was in Florence, Italy, among winding streets and fearless artisans, that she learned the truth about the devastating flood of 1966, met a few of the Mud Angels who helped restore the city fifty years ago, and began to follow the trail of a story about tragedy and hope.

Beth is the award-winning author of nineteen books for readers of all ages, including You Are My Only, Small Damages, Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, and Going Over. She also teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lena Dunham on the Ick of Authorial Self Promotion

Ask anyone who has the distinct un-pleasure of taking about book promotions with me: I have a hard time with the whole affair. I love joining fellow writers in conversation. I like thinking out loud about the stuff of books, how they are made. But launching books is difficult territory for me, and the universe, I'm convinced, senses my ambiguity. Either it storms mightily on my book launch day (so much rain, the roads are flooded). Or there aren't enough books to go around. Or something really unsavory is written the Big Day Of. Or all things happen at once. Book upon book.
I should take that as a sign, should I not? Or should I just grin and bear it and stop writing blog posts like this one, which got me into a little trouble back in June.
Not surprisingly, I have been following Lena Dunham's book tour with great interest. What she says stacked up against what she'll do. Here is the latest, as reported by Alexandra Alter, in The New York Times:

In an era when author tours and splashy book parties have grown increasingly rare, Ms. Dunham has organized a traveling circus of sorts that seems more like a roving Burning Man festival than a sober, meet-the-author literary event. Prominent comedians and writers, such as the “Portlandia” star Carrie Brownstein and the novelist Zadie Smith, have thrown their weight behind Ms. Dunham and will appear on her tour as part of a carefully curated cast of artists, along with live music, poetry readings and, naturally, food trucks.
“I found the idea of a traditional author tour, where you go and stand behind the lectern and talk about yourself, I found it a little bit embarrassing, a little blatantly self-promotional and a little boring,” Ms. Dunham said. “I wanted it to have an arts festival feel, which is why we now have all these remarkable, special weirdos who I found on the Internet.”
... The tour is also a way for Ms. Dunham to shed her TV persona and rebrand herself as an author. By putting her onstage alongside seasoned writers like the memoirist Mary Karr and the novelist Vendela Vida, Random House hopes to cast Ms. Dunham as a major new literary talent, not just a celebrity who leveraged her fame for a big book deal.

The question then is—Does a cast of characters and a performance schedule negate the self promotional aspects of a book launch? Can the nature of any event rebrand a celebrity as an author? I'm thinking (small thought) that what matters most in the end is the book itself. And that Lena Dunham has probably written a very good one—a book that would sell and please, regardless.

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Naming the truth: Bracing honesty from Meghan Daum, in The New Yorker

You want to know what honesty is? It's the ability to stare straight into the heart of something and speak the truth. Not the comfortable distortions. Not the way you wish it were—it or you. Meghan Daum piercingly and hauntingly writes the truth in this new piece in The New Yorker.

From an essay in the September 29 edition, entitled "Difference Maker." Spare, searching, riveting, deep, this essay that took my breath away.

There was a grassy lawn where the dog rolled around scratching its back, and a big table on the deck where friends sat on weekends eating grilled salmon and drinking wine and complaining about things they knew were a privilege to complain about (the cost of real estate, the noise of leaf blowers, the overratedness of the work of more successful peers). And as I lay on that bed it occurred to me, terrifyingly, that all of it might not be enough. Maybe such pleasures, while pleasurable enough, were merely trimmings on a nonexistent tree. Maybe nothing—not a baby or the lack of a baby, not a beautiful house, not rewarding work—was ever going to make us anything other than the chronically dissatisfied, perpetually second-guessers we already were.

An interview with Meghan on The New Yorker blog is essential reading for anyone contemplating a memoir or memoiristic essay. Among other things, Meghan speaks of the difference between having material and having something to say.

Yes. And absolutely.

PA Forward: Authors & Illustrators Speak Up for PA Libraries

On November 6th (or thereabouts) writers and illustrators from across the great state of Pennsylvania will be stepping inside libraries to celebrate the impact libraries have on our lives and to remind our communities of the importance of safeguarding these essential institutions going forward. I have been paired with Downingtown High School (West) and librarian Michelle Nass, and what a day we are cooking up—four presentations on the Berlin Wall and the library research that led to that book's creation, and an afternoon among high school book clubbers who are reading Going Over.

I'm delighted and honored to be involved. It's a huge program, thoughtfully developed and executed by a team of librarians—including Margie Stern, the Coordinator of Youth Services in the Delaware County Library System—and eagerly participated in by those many of us who have relied on libraries throughout our careers (and long before "career" was a word we even entertained).

This weekend, the 2014 Pennsylvania Library Association Conference gets underway at the Lancaster County Convention Center. I'm grateful to have been joined with writer/teacher/editor/friend Stephen Fried (Thing of Beauty, Bitter Pills, The New Rabbi, Husbandry, Appetite for America) and Neal Bascomb (The Nazi Hunters, The Perfect Mile, Red Mutiny) for a Monday, 2:00 panel on nonfiction. I'm grateful, too, for the chance to hang out with the guardians of books, otherwise known as librarians. Thank you to Karl R. for the invitation.

If you are at the event, I hope you'll find us.

a few upcoming events

This coming Monday, at the Pennsylvania Library Association Convention, I'll be sitting with Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb on a panel devoted to nonfiction, an event I've been looking forward to for quite awhile.

Other events at a variety of venues—Rosemont College, Montgomery County Community College, Trinity Urban Life Center, University of Pennsylvania, Downingtown High School West, Musehouse/Schuylkill Writing Center, Montgomery County Historical Center, and the National Harbor Convention Center—are upcoming, and I share them here, on the off chance that our paths might cross. Nonfiction, memoir, promotions, the Schuylkill River, the fate of young adult fiction, the Berlin Wall, the importance of libraries, and my new April 2015 novel, One Thing Stolen (Chronicle Books) will all be discussed.

In between, I'll be dancing the cha-cha for DanceSport Academy on the Bryn Mawr College campus to the song "Blurred Lines." Which is exactly how I'm feeling.

September 29, 2014, 2:00 PM 
Nonfiction Panel with Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb
PaLA Convention
Lancaster County Convention Center
Lancaster County, PA

October 11, 2014
Memoir and Creative Nonfiction Panel (1:15), with Karen Rile and Julia Chang
Marketing for Published Authors Panel (2:30), with Kelly Simmons and Donna Galanti
Push to Publish Conference
Rosemont College
Rosemont, PA
Details here.

October 14, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Montgomery County Community College West Campus
Community Room
Details here.

October 16, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Trinity Urban Life Center
Philadelphia, PA
Details here.

November 1, 2014, 4:00 PM
University of Pennsylvania Homecoming Panel
LORENE CARY (C'78), BETH KEPHART (C'82), JORDAN SONNENBLICK (C'91), and KATHY DEMARCO VAN CLEVE (C'88) — and moderated by children's book editor LIZ VAN DOREN 
Young Adult Fiction Panel
Kelly Writers House
Philadelphia, PA


November 6, 2014, All Day
Downingtown High School West
PA Forward Speak Up!
Presentations on GOING OVER and Book Club Chat
Downingtown, PA 

November 8, 2014, 10:00 AM
Musehouse Writing Retreat in the Woods
The Schuylkill Center
Philadelphia, PA

November 15, 2014
Luncheon Keynote
Montgomery County Historical Society
(private function)

November 21, 2014, 1:00 PM
NCTE Signing, ONE THING STOLEN
National Harbor Convention Center
Washington, DC

What bungles some YA tales, and why A.S. King rises above (and the launch of Glory O'Brien)

Here are some of the ways that young adult authors can get themselves in trouble. There's the endless repetition of tropes—the clever line on repeat. There's the fuzzy hey-I-can't-really-explain-this-implausible-plot-so-I'll smudge-the-language-into-lazy-ambiguity-and-hope-it-all-looks-like-part-of-an-actual-master-plan. There's the Valley Girl/Guy voice and the untrusting over explaining and the shying away from big themes with the hope that a familiar plot—or a cinematic a-ha ending—will be enough.

As the category becomes ever more popular, as it sells increasing numbers of books (according to Shelf Awareness, "children's/YA continued to soar this year, with sales up 30.5%, to $695.9 million (while) sales of adult fiction and nonfiction fell 3.6%, to $1.726 billion), as it permeates the culture in dissings and debates, it is, I think, increasingly important, to look at and learn from those who do YA well.

A.S. King is one such author. Her Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, launching on October 14, is, once again, a brave and elastic plot that gives King room to ruminate on big themes and agitations. Yesterday afternoon, I read the first 67 pages, and discovered, again, just how particular King's language is, how capable of building characters, stretching worlds, and conversing with mechanical and natural phenomena.

For example: King, a photographer herself, has made her narrator a photographer. It's not a casual choice. It's both plot and metaphor. And it's instruction of the sort that is real and meaningful. Read the passage below. Check out its specificity and its ease (not at all simple to achieve both at once, I assure you). Then look at the words "max black." King, being King, will not leave that alone. She'll soon capitalize the M and the B and make Max Black a character. It is of a whole. It is considered. This is how fine YA gets done.

A light meter could tell you what zone everything in a scene fell into. Bright spots—waterfall foam, reflections, a polar bear—were high numbers. Shadows—holes, dark still water, eels beneath the surface—were low numbers. You had to let the light into the camera in just the right way. You had to meter: find the dark and light spots in your subject. You had to bracket: manually change your shutter speed or aperture to adjust the amount of light hitting the film—or, in my case, for the yearbook, the microchip. You didn't want to blow out the highlights, and you had to give the shadows all the detail you could by finding the darkest max black areas and then shooting them three zones lighter.

You can download the first 67 pages of Glory O'Brien for free here. In two weeks, you can buy the book itself. I hope you'll do both. In the meantime, congratulations to A.S. King.

I don't know what it says, but I like it (Undercover, in the Netherlands)

It is possible to feel affection to people far away, in other countries—never met, never seen. This morning I am grateful to Callenbach, the Dutch publishing house that beautifully reproduced Small Damages not long ago and today shares Undercover, the first young adult novel I ever dared to write (1997), seems like centuries ago.

And get a load of that pink!

Thank you, Callenbach.

The Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series Introduces Dr. Isabel Hull and Thoughts on the First World War

It has been my privilege, through the years, to share word of the annual lecture series created by my father and Villanova University in memory of my mother, Lore Kephart. My mother was, herself, a distinguished woman—not just a graduate of Villanova and a writer, but a woman of great intelligence and grace who also (with enviable ease) served dinners no one who ever ate them will forget.

My mother would have deeply appreciated the time that the Villanova team, together with my father, put into selecting Dr. Isabel V. Hull, Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University, as this year's honored guest. Dr. Hull has two degrees from Yale University in History, as well as an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. At Cornell she teaches courses with titles like "The International Laws of War," "The First World War: Causes, Conduct, Consequences," and "History of Liberalism." She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a John Guggenheim Fellow, and an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellow.

This year Dr. Hull published her new book, A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law in the First World War, which Samuel Moyn, writing in the Wall Street Journal, wrote: "is a strong demonstration of the worth of international law and the laws of war in particular, and vindicates Ms. Hull's standing as one of our greatest historians of modern European politics."

It is this book that will form the basis of Dr. Hull's talk at Villanova University on October 9, starting at 7 o'clock. The event is free and open to the public. The Kephart family and Villanova University extend a warm invitation.

she was chasing a bubble;

she was making a wish.

These days, I'm wishing, too.

For all of you out there who are working toward dreams, I give this day over to a celebration of your courage.

the best part of writing is

The other day, as part of the Tour de Blog, I reflected on my writing process—the fits and starts, the horror of first drafts, the ratatouille of useless tangents, the chocolate that is weighing me down. 
Perhaps I didn't say enough about my passion for this lit gig, or how great a gift any snatch of writing time actually is. 
I'm particularly enamored of beginnings—those first glorious 25 pages when everything still seems possible, when you haven't yet run yourself to the ground, or blocked off your options, or forced yourself into an irresolvable scenario, or cried.
But I also flat-out love that part of the project when the book is in good shape, the characters are known, the plot has been worked through, and the mood and tone are widely established. Fear no longer drives you. Curiosity does. What else might that character say? What else could that yellow wreathe mean? Who else does he find along the shore? And why the obsession with a fawn at dawn?
I'm right there right now with my 2016 book. Close to done, but not wanting to be done.
I am stealing part of today to slink away and find out more.