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It was meant to be. There Cyndi Reeves and I were, in the lobby of the Bryn Mawr Film Institute, catching up with each other ahead of a Bryn Mawr College sponsored dinner with Phillip Lopate. That was all wonderful enough, but then there came Anmiryam Budner, of Main Point Books, with a box of Better Living Through Criticism, written by A.O. Scott, who was slated to speak at the theater later that night.

A. O. Scott, I said? Really? For I had, not long before, reviewed Better Living for the Chicago Tribune, and, before, that, simply loved reading Scott's movie reviews for the New York Times. A.O. Scott. A literary celebrity.

Two friends, a literary celebrity, dinner plans with the nation's great essayist, and then a conversation with Anmiryam in which she pronounced that the book Cyndi and I must read next (we always ask and she always tells) was Adam Haslett's Imagine Me Gone. Anmiryam is an impassioned book reader, which is what makes her such a stunning book seller. From her lips to our hearts, these books.

Cyndi and I were in. Soon our friend Kelly Simmons was in as well. We'd all buy Haslett's newest, and then we would discuss.

Books and friendship. Like coffee and cream.

Maybe you'll be in, too. Maybe we could all discuss? Because Haslett bears discussion. For now I would like to share with you the most exquisite passage in a book built of exquisite passages—a story about the long-lingering affects of a father's mental unwellness. Here is Michael, the oldest son, who has some of his father's imbalance. He's talking about fear. It's devastating because it's so true.

What do you fear when you fear everything? Time passing and not passing. Death and life. I could say my lungs never filled with enough air, no matter how many puffs of my inhaler I took. Or that my thoughts moved too quickly to complete, severed by a perpetual vigilance. But even to say this would abet the lie that terror can be described, when anyone who's ever known it knows that it has no components but is instead everywhere inside you all the time, until you can recognize yourself only by the tensions that string one minute to the next And yet I keep lying, by describing, because how else can I avoid this second, and the one after it? This being the condition itself: the relentless need to escape a moment that never ends.

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I'll be signing THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU, my Jersey Shore novel (Chronicle Books), tomorrow, Saturday, April 30, 2 PM, in celebration of Independent Bookstore Day. Hope to see you at Main Point Books in Bryn Mawr, PA.

I love the sea, I love the shore, I wonder about storms and now, the mysteries of family and friendship.

I wrote of these things.

I hope to see you there. Not a reading, just a signing. Come any time between 2 and 3 PM.

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There is ocean, storm, community, friendship, family, mystery in This Is the Story of You. There are model airplanes pinned to a ceiling and bobbing in the breeze.

There is this book, which will launch next Tuesday, April 12, and be featured in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Yesterday afternoon, Hannah Moushabeck, Associate Marketing Manager at Chronicle, began to send me Story word from independent booksellers. Mired in memoir newsletter management and an odd strain of politics, I had not, in any way, expected this.

Next Hannah sent me two images. The one above. The one you're about to see.

What a glorious touch, I thought—this photo of the real book beside one of the figurative and metaphoric planes within its pages.

Thank you, Hannah. And thank you, booksellers. Their words below.

 “What we lose, what we find, how we survive. Mira is alone when the storm hits her barrier-island town, with only a half-grown cat for company. The furor and devastation of the storm is horrible, but it is the aftermath, in the days before emergency help arrives, that is the most harrowing part: looking for loved ones; finding the dead; treating the wounded; finding food and water and shelter; and holding on to hope. The story of a huge storm and its impact on one small community, This is the Story of You is shot through with the gorgeous lyricism of Kephart's writing.” —Nancy Banks, Bookseller, City Stacks Books and Coffee
 
“Beth Kephart has written a lyrical novel where it is as easy to get lost in the language as the story. As often occurs in YA novels, Mira Bunal, is forced to face the worst on her own when a storm like Sandy hits the NJ island she lives on while her brother is receiving a treatment for a serious congenital illness. Mira finds the strength she needs and help in places she doesn't expect it. A great read for both teens and adults --that you might not want to read while summering at the Jersey shore.” —Cathy Fiebach, Bookseller, Main Point Books

  “To pay attention, to love the world, to live beyond ourselves."  This is what they learned living as year-rounders on the 6 mile long 1/2 mile wide vacationers paradise of Haven.  This gripping, powerful YA novel is the story of family and friendship, of learning and learning more, of place and tragedy and resilience.  It is the perfect summer read, but This is the Story of You  will linger long after the last page is turned.  —Angie Tally, Bookseller, The Country Bookshop

“Beautifully written, This is the Story of You follows the life of Mira Banul, a year-rounder living on Haven, a six mile by one-half mile island. Year-rounders are prepared for everything so when news of a giant storm blowing in reaches the island, they think nothing of it. But the storm is like nothing they've ever seen before, and when her family is stuck on the mainland and one of her closest friends is missing, Mira must learn how to cope with loss and rekindle her hope if she is to help the island recover. With new mysteries popping up every chapter, This Is The Story of You is impossible to put down.” — Marya Johnston, Bookseller, Out West Books  

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In less than five weeks, This Is the Story of You, my Jersey Shore novel, will be released by Chronicle Books. A Junior Library Guild selection that has received two early stars, this is a mystery set in the wake of a monster storm. It's a meditation on our environment and an exploration of friendship, sisterhood, loss, and resilience.

It is, perhaps, the most urgent novel I've yet written, both in terms of themes and pacing.

On March 18, in the New York Public Library, as part of the New York City Teen Author Festival, I'll be reading from the book and talking about the perspective adults bring to the novels they write about teens in a panel gorgeously assembled by David Levithan and featuring Carolyn Mackler, Luanne Rice, and Francisco Stork. On March 20, I'll be signing early copies at New York City's iconic Books of Wonder. And on April 30, at Main Point Books in Bryn Mawr, PA, I'll be doing a signing.

This morning I'm sharing this scene.

Here I should probably explain the rules, the lines in the sand, the ins and outs of Haven. We were a people shaped by extremes. Too much and too little were in our genes.

To be specific:

Too little was the size of things—the dimension of our island, the we-fit-inside-it-bank-turned-school, the quality of restaurants, the quantity of bridges.

Too much was The Season—Memorial Day through Labor Day. Vacationeers by the boatload, bikinis by the square inch, coolers by the mile, a puke-able waft of SPFs. The longest lines at night were at Dippy’s Icy Creams.

The longest lines by day circled the lighthouse. During The Season the public trash bins were volcanic eruptions, the songbirds were scarce, the deer hid where you couldn’t find them, the hamburgers were priced like mini filets mignons, and the rentable bikes streamed up, streamed down. At the Mini Amuse the Giant Wheel turned, the Alice in Wonderland teased, the dozen giraffes on the merry-go-round looked demoralized and beat. At Dusker’s Five and Dime the hermit crabs in the painted shells sold for exorbitant fees.

Whoever was up there in the little planes that dragged the advertising banners around would have looked down and seen the flopped hats, crusted towels, tippy shovels, broken castles, and bands of Frisbee fliers—Vacationeers, each one. Whoever was up there looking down would not have seen the bona fides, the Year-Rounders, the us, because we weren’t on the beach. We were too employed renting out the bikes, flipping the burgers, scooping the Dippy’s, cranking up the carousel, veering the Vacationeers out of riptides—to get out and be seen. From the age of very young we had been taught to maximize The Season, which was code for keeping the minimum wage coming, which was another way of saying that we stepped out of the way, we subserved, for the three hot months of summer.

We Year-Rounders had been babies together, toddlers together, kindergartners together, Alabasterans. We had a pact: Let the infiltrators be and watch them leave and don’t divide to conquer. We knew that what mattered most of all was us, and that we’d be there for us, and that we would not allow the outside world to actually dilute us. Like I said,we knew our water.

Six miles long.

One-half mile wide. Haven.

Go forth and conquer together.

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Friends, This Is the Story of You, my Jersey shore storm mystery, is (I have heard it said) printed and on its way to me. Story has received two stars in these early days (Kirkus and School Library Journal) and kind words from BookPage and Publishers Weekly. It is a Junior Library Guild selection and will be featured in an upcoming story on environmentally aware novels for younger readers in The Writer Magazine.

The launch date (early April) grows near.

In celebration of it all, Chronicle Books is sponsoring a Goodreads Giveaway, starting tomorrow.

Information is right there (I turn to glance toward the left side of my blog, where I hope you now glance as well), should you wish to enter. Twenty-five will win.

In the meantime, a big box of One Thing Stolen paperbacks has arrived. One Thing Stolen, which won a Parents' Choice Gold Medal and is a TAYSHAs selection, among other things, will launch alongside of Story.

I'll be signing early copies of Story at Books of Wonder, during the New York City Teen Authors Festival, on Sunday, March 20.

I will be signing Story and Stolen (and possibly even Love: A Philadelphia Affair) at Main Point Books, in honor of Independent Bookstore Day, at 2 PM.

I'd love to see you.

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Anmiryam Budner of Main Point Books (Bryn Mawr, PA) has a way about her. A stealth please, try that wins me over every time. I think you will like this book, you will appreciate this writer, this reminds me of something you might have done or might some day do, she'll say. And there's no walking away from that.

Most recently I left Main Point Books with The World Before Us, a novel of great complexity and intrigue by Aislinn Hunter. It is a story told in part by remembrancers—ghosts, if you like—who have gathered around a British archivist named Jane. Jane works in a small museum of vast collections—and that museum is about to close. Jane also endlessly works through a childhood trauma—the day the little girl left in her charge (Jane was fifteen at the time and slightly (secretly) in love with the child's father) disappeared on the estate of a Victorian asylum. Obsessed with the disappearance of little Lily, Jane is also obsessed with other mysteries of the asylum's late 19th century heyday. She ponders, researches, loses herself in the vortex of time.

Those remembrancers listen in. They remember their own pasts. They move the story forward.

Hunter is an author of many gifts. Her ability to conjure colliding periods, a musty museum, multiple distant lives, garden ruins is, I think, uncanny—she does it all so very well. Then there's the shape of her sentences, the sly inventiveness bent into even the most quiet of scenes:

... she reached a large glass case on thick oak feet. It contained a series of criss-crossed branches upon which Nathanial Hartford, Esquire, had supervised the wire mounting of two hundred and four hummingbirds in an attempt to display all the colours and designs of the species. The birds were caught in various stages of rest or flight, their wings closed or spread out like the slats of a fan. Most people paused here briefly, if they stopped at all, but Jane studied each bird in turn, the dark beads of their eyes, their long bills, flamboyant gorgets. Those of us who had followed her into the museum studied the birds too, and watched her, the care she gave each individual thing.

"When is a bird no longer a bird?" one of us asked.

This is a story that takes its time, that introduces large casts of alive and dead characters, that hinges around the questions that an archivist has about a character that appears to have gone missing from the history books, a character named N. The suspense is a researcher's suspense. The plot is not nearly as important as the themes—time, memory, regret, the cloister of the dead around the turbulence of the living. I was reminded, as I read, of Nova Ren Suma's The Walls Around Us (about which I wrote here)—another book told, at times, with the Choral We, another book in which the language is careful, inventive, and haunted.

It took me a while to finish World. I've been lost inside a thicket of Too Many things. And even if, at times, I wished for a few less direct intrusions by those remembrancers, even if I wondered if the story might have succeeded with fewer characters, I always wanted to get back to this story. I wanted to see how this incredibly talented Hunter would pull her complex machinery off. I wanted to appreciate the particularity of this novelist, in passages like this:

And in the dark, in drifts of memory, we recall some of the people and things we have happened pon, moments that aroused us from the stupor of our lives—the plumes of a peacock unfolding under an elm, the bright platter of a sky coroneted by trees, a list retrieved from between an armoire and the wall of a house by the sea:

Flat of palm on abdomen
Shift of sheets
Hard shelf of his hips against the soft of mine
Curve of water glass against my lips—his hand trembling
Coarse planking of the wood floor
The hitch of a sliver

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Lately I've had cause (again) to celebrate the independent bookstores. That they exist. That their owners and their colleagues work so very hard. That they know books. That they believe in culture, literature, and ideas.

That they are endlessly innovative, funky, fun.

In and out of the shops I've gone. Toward the events they have supported. No single event has been like any other event. Every single store is its own vibrant cluster of possibility.

And so today, a photo thank you to the stores that stand at the heart of our communities. To Ann of The Spiral Bookcase, who lugged all those books out to those very special events at the Ambler Theater and Laurel Hill. To Heather of Children's Book World, who sent One Thing Stolen to our Philadelphia/Florence party at Radnor Memorial Library (where I learned that the book was in its second, newly colorized printing). To Cathy and Anmiryam of Main Point Books, where we had the nicest Sunday afternoon. To Ashley at Penn Book Center, who placed LOVE in the window and talked to me for a long time one afternoon. To Michael at Joseph Fox Books, who supported the Free Library launch. To the glorious Bank Street Bookstore, which sold Small Damages to this beautiful reader during that be-all-end-all conference. To Caroline of Frenchtown's Book Garden, who organized our memoir retreat at the Rat (where James Agee once wrote) as well as my morning at the art-filled Delaware Valley Regional High School. And to Stephanie of Harleysville Books, who brought out a crowd on a rainy night and who invited the great baker Ann to share her special treats (pretzel brittle, in honor of Philadelphia!).

I'll be visiting a few more bookstores—both the incredibly hospitable Barnes and Nobles and two more indies, Chester County Books and Big Blue Marble Books—in December, the dates below.

It's restorative, being around people who care about holding the world close and safe.

December 3, 2015, 7 PM
LOVE signing
Chester County Books
West Chester, PA

December 5, 2015, noon
LOVE signing
Barnes and Noble
Devon, PA

December 10, 2015, 12 - 2PM
Barnes & Noble signing
Rittenhouse Square
Philadelphia, PA

December 12, 2015, 2 PM
In-store signing
LOVE, etc.
Big Blue Marble Bookstore
551 Carpenter Lane
Philadelphia, PA

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Look. We come around to this. Again and again, we do. We are living with a book newly launched (though perhaps we wrote pieces of it years ago). We are grateful for the invitations extended, grateful for a chance to sing the book's song, eager not to fail those who have been kind enough to open their doors to us—and also aware that every time we mention our own book we are not talking about the countless million million things that matter much more deeply than ever our own books could.

(Refuges. Candidates. Hunger. Homelessness. Heartbreak. Danger. Unexpected and unimaginable losses. Aging. Love suspended.)

It has always been important to me to use this blog to celebrate the world and the work of others. To raise questions. To be honest. To admit: I'm failing right now. I'm not writing right now. I'm stuck right now. I screwed that up. I should have— Also to admit: I have been graced. I have been blessed. I know luck when I see luck.

That's what I'm here to talk about and I am (believe me) aware when I lose the hoped-for balance.

This, however, is also true. Book stores make room. Festivals provide opportunities to think out loud with people I respect. The ladies of Laurel Hill are throwing a fundraiser and I've promised to help them tell that story.

Forgive the apparent self indulgence.

I promise that it is almost over. That I am stockpiling books to read with an eye toward the future of this blog when, in just a few weeks, I won't be talking about me.

But for now, this weekend: I am blessed beyond measure to be included in the BookFest@Bank Street, on Saturday. I'll be talking about narrative risk in young adult literature with three people I hugely respect, and I'm going to learn so much (not just from that panel but from every single other person who is attending—what a list).

Sunday, October 25, I'll be talking with the wonderful voice of KYW, Brad Segall, about Philadelphia and some of the Philadelphians I love (go Sister Kim and her girls!) on WOGL 98.1 FM and WZMP 96.5 FM at 6:30 AM and on WXTU at 92.5 FM at 7:30 AM. Later that afternoon, at 4 PM, I'll be at Main Point Books, a glorious Indie on Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr, signing One Thing Stolen and Love. And next Sunday I will be at the Women for Greater Philadelphia annual fundraiser, there at Laurel Hill Mansion, a public event. We'll be celebrating the Schuylkill River by reading from Flow and two novels—Dangerous Neighbors and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent—where the river features boldly.

Where I live, on this morning, the sky is breaking blue.

It is another day.

That is the greatest miracle of all.

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A number of weeks ago, I was asked to take a photograph of my TBR pile. And so I did, joining many other authors in this wonderful photo diary posted today on Mom.me. I can proudly report that I've read a number of the books pictured in my stack since snapping the picture. I must also report that I recently took nearly 60 new hardcovers to my local library for donation and my house is more book stuffed than ever.

I'll never get ahead.

You probably never will either, because there are so many great books to be read. And if you're looking for even more temptations, then I recommend two book-savvy bloggers to you.

First, meet Anmiryam Budner, who kind of sort of blew me away last Saturday at Main Point Books with her deep knowledge of authors and stories. There we stood, in that lovely space, pointing to this book, that book, this one. She'd read them all. I'd read enough of them to talk at length. She gave me room to complain about the unfair review of Stacey D'Erasmo's Wonderland in the New York Times Book Review, and anyone who lets me do that is golden. That woman knows this business, and she talks about it and the books she loves here, on My Overstuffed Shelves.

Second, here is Elizabeth Law, a children's publishing giant now in the business of book editing and ushering. For her first blog post ever she wrote about ten books she loves and why. Fascinating insights, with more—on word count, editorial letters, and publishing magic—to come. She's a fresh new voice on the book blogging scene, and so we welcome her in.

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You know that Shebooks publishing venture I've been speaking of? That ever-growing cache of stories and memoirs—written by women to be read in one sitting? That brain child of Peggy Northrop and Laura Fraser that has been releasing truly fantastic e-books for a mere $2.99 each, week by week, by writers like Hope Edelman, Jane Ciabattari, Ariel Gore, and Suzanne Braun Levine?

Yes, that one.

Well, a fully enhanced Shebooks site is now live. It features author interviews, videos, extras. It offers a subscription service (currently discounted), that allows readers to buy the books they want at a low monthly price.

(Shebooks is also launching a Kickstarter "Equal Writes" campaign this coming Tuesday.)

My own Shebook, Nest. Flight. Sky. On love and loss, one wing at a time, is the first memoir I have written in many years and many books. It matters to me. Launched early this year, it now sits on the enhanced Shebooks site with extras such as an excerpt, a reading guide, and an interview which begins like this, below:

What prompted you to write Nest. Flight. Sky.?

I teach memoir at Penn, I’ve written about its glories, challenges, and consequences in Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, I blog daily about life (Beth Kephart Books), and once, a lifetime ago, I wrote five memoirs. But it has been many years and many books since I’d dared to write the extended truth. By the time Shebooks emerged, I was desperate to speak. My mother had passed away. I had become obsessed with birds and nests, but I did not understand why. I believe that it’s only in writing toward questions that we find at least some of the answers. I wrote Nest. Flight. Sky. to find some answers.

Birds and nests have been a recurrent theme in your work. What is the origin of this?

Nest. Flight. Sky: On love and loss, one wing at a time is, indeed, about recurrent images. It’s about those birds, those wings, those nests that have entered into all the fiction I have written—one book after another, ever since my mother died. It all began with winter finches tapping on my windowpane in the months after her passing. It became a quest for hawks, for hummingbirds, for flight.

When did you first decide you were a writer? 

Do we ever decide that we are writers? Or do we just decide that we must write, that we will not be able to breathe if we do not? I’m not sure, even all these books in, that I am a writer. I think readers are in charge of that decision. I only know that, since I was nine, words and their melodies gave me a sense of being nearly whole.

To read the whole thing, go here.

And local readers, please join me and other writers today at Main Point Books to help celebrate the first year in the life of an Indie. I'll be signing Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. For more on that, go here.

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Anybody who knows me knows how I feel about labels. Applied to people. Applied to literature.

Still, those of us who write young adult fiction must, at times, face those who suggest that it is a lesser form, not nearly as important as the work written expressly for adults—a problem I discussed in a story for Publishing Perspectives titled, "Removing the YA Label: A Proposal, A Fantasy."

(Those of us who write quote-unquote literary contemporary YA fiction must also endure the suggestion that John Green has singlehandedly ushered in this genre's golden era, but that's a topic for another conversation, and we must be careful not to blame John Green for what is written about him.)

The problem with the YA-is-lesser assessment is that the YA writers I respect aren't writing down, aren't writing in haste, aren't writing with any less literary ambition than those who write novels for adults. We're just writing stories that happen to have younger protagonists at their heart; often we're writing "whole family" tales. Always, if we're serious about this stuff, if we're writing not toward known trends but toward felt story, we're writing as best as we can.

And so I will admit to feeling equal measures of joy and peace at finding Going Over on the Main Line Today list of 10 great beach reads by local authors. Not 10 YA books. Just ten books by authors ranging from Robin Black and Jennifer Weiner to Kelly Corrigan and Ken Kalfus. Ten books curated by Cathy Feibach of Main Point Books, who has made it her business, in this, the first year of her store's existence, to get to know who is writing what and to evaluate each book on its own terms.

I am honored. And I am looking forward to next Saturday, when I will drive down Lancaster Avenue and stop in Bryn Mawr and spend an hour signing both Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir in Cathy's store. My signing caps a full day of signings, the details for which are here. And when I'm not signing, you can be sure that I'll be buying the books I want, seeing straight past their labels.

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With gratitude, as always. I do know how lucky I am.

Additionally, my wonderful friend Karen Bernstein—she of gifts from Diane Keaton, she of brilliant Going Over pots—reports that she found Going Over on page 71 of the new issue of Main Line Today Magazine listed as one of the "ten great beach reads by local authors." Huge thanks to Karen, and to the magazine.

I have always loved being local.

Speaking of local: Come celebrate the first year in the life of Main Point Books next Saturday, when a fleet of super cool local authors will be signing books. I'll be there at three o'clock with both Going Over and Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir. More on the day can be found here.

Finally, more on Going Over can be found here, through the hugely generous BCCB review.

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So pleased to be part of this stellar line up of local authors to help celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Main Line's newest independent bookstore.

Join us — May 24th. Main Point is the cute shop at 1041 West Lancaster Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA.

See you soon?

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I have some interesting programs scheduled in the weeks and months ahead.

Among other things, I'll be helping to kick off The Head and The Hand's fabulous 4th Floor Chapbook Series this coming Monday, with a reading from Going Over. On May 24th, I'll help celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Main Line's newest, thriving independent bookstore, Main Point Books, with a Going Over signing.

In September, meanwhile, I'll be joining Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb at the Pennsylvania Library Association Convention, to talk nonfiction and Handling the Truth. Then, in mid-October, I'll be giving two keynote addresses on River Dreams, to celebrate the Schuylkill as the PA River of the Year. In November, I'll head down to Penn to sit on a Young Adult Fiction Panel during Homecoming Weekend.

Finally, next spring, I'll hop a train to Washington, DC, and meet with the students of St. Alban School, a boarding school situated on the campus of the National Cathedral. The 7th and 8th graders will have read Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. Many have already read Dr. Radway's Sarsparilla Resolvent. 

I'm looking forward to it all.

May 12, 2014Science Leadership Academy
GOING OVER reading
in conjunction with The Head and the Hand Press
Philadelphia, PA

May 24, 2014, 3 -4 PM
GOING OVER signing
Main Point Books
Bryn Mawr, PA

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

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

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

November 1, 2014, 4:00 PM
University of Pennsylvania Homecoming Panel
Young Adult Fiction Panel
Kelly Writers House
Philadelphia, PA

April 10, 2015
Talking about FLOW, the required 7th grade read
St. Albans School
Washington, DC

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