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I struggle, perhaps I always will, with striking the right balance. How much do we talk about ourselves out here? How much do we turn our attention to others? What does a small personal moment mean against the backdrop of grave concerns or else-where suffering?
I don't have the answers.
But here, today, is this:
This Is the Story of You, my young adult novel about the consequences of a monster storm, was named to the 2017 TAYSHAS Reading List today, and I could not be more grateful on behalf of this quiet book that means to much to me. Thank you, TAYSHAS, and thank you, Taylor Norman of Chronicle Books, who is so consistently kind to me. The link to the full list is
here.
An excerpt from
Nest. Flight. Sky., a Shebooks memoir about the loss of my mother, appears on the beautiful literary site, The Woven Tale Press, today. Woven Tale is like a book you want to read—beautiful considered and laid out. That link is
here.
Finally, my husband's work will be featured in a major exhibition that opens tomorrow. This international show, Craft Forms, has its home at the Wayne Art Center, and tomorrow night I'll abandon my ordinary, often wrinkled, not exactly glamorous garb for a dress and heels to help celebrate the opening night. The link to my husband's work
is here.
Oh, bless that Taylor Norman of Chronicle Books, forever uplifting, forever near. Her email of yesterday shared this news that the 50th anniversary of the terrible flooding of Arno will be honored in San Francisco's own American Bookbinders Museum.
This was the natural and cultural catastrophe that inspired my novel
One Thing Stolen (Chronicle Books). This forever-proximate possibility of culture (and the art of the mind) being lost to forces beyond anyone's control.
As Matthew barrels down on this earth, as natural disasters hovers, as we keep looking for more credible ways to feel secure, this story of the Arno spilling into and across a great city, into the rooms of great museums, into the basements of churches, into homes and shops is pressingly relevant. This story of those Mud Angels who brought their wings to the resurrection of that place still matters.
We depend on one another to see each other through. To dig down into the muck and salvage beauty.
My praise, then, to the American Bookbinders Museum. And my thanks to Taylor, for letting me know.
A few weeks ago, the very lovely (inside! out!) Taylor Norman wrote with what was, to me, surprising news:
This Is the Story of You has found some lucky momentum.
We trace much of that momentum to the book's gorgeous cover (thank you, Chronicle Books), to its timeliness in this weather-worried world, and to word of mouth (thank you, kind readers). We trace some of it the Jr Library Guild's generous selection. And now we also have Scholastic Books to thank, for making
Story a book club selection.
Taylor just sent along this photo of a Scholastic edition book.
To which I answered, as I so often do when answering Taylor: woot.
Yesterday, amidst much corporate work, three things happened:
I learned that
Going Over, my 1983 Berlin Wall book, has officially launched as a paperback, and I thank Chronicle Books for its faith in this story. (And the darling Taylor Norman, for tweeting the news.)
I learned (again from Taylor, who has so steadfastly supported this book) that
This Is the Story of You has gone to print, with its gorgeous jacket and incredibly generous quotes from Dana Reinhardt, Tim Wynne-Jones, and Margo Rabb (and its Junior Library Guild citation).
I talked to Danielle Smith, who (in a matter of days) read the middle grade novel I've lately been obsessed with, said so many reassuring things, talked with me about some decisions I'd have to make as I refined the story, and said yes to representing me. I have known Danielle for almost as long as I have been writing for younger readers. The popular force behind the beloved
There's a Book blog, Danielle has read my stories, always. She has supported me in a multitude of ways—throwing blog parties, walking the floor of the BEA with me, calling just to talk, listening as I worked through ideas. A few years ago, Danielle launched a career as an agent and today, as a member of Red Fox Literary, she is seeing her authors receive raves and stars, foreign sales, and success at hoped-for houses. I've always been happy to call Danielle my friend. I'm incredibly happy to be taking this step forward into the land of Middle Grade with her.
Some things aren't surprising when I am hosted by the Radnor Memorial Library. How gracious Pamela Sedor forever is. How delicious (and pretty) is that cake. How kind my friends, husband, and father are. I hope my gratitude is felt and known. I am fully aware of how precious time is, and what it means when time is set aside to support another's floating dreams.
But last night, after photographs and stories of this regional home were shared, after I read from
One Thing Stolen, after I shared the opening pages of
This Is the Story of You (and gave a copy to Lucky Number 9)—after all that, when I was signing books, I turned over a copy of
One Thing Stolen and saw a new cover staring out at me. The formerly black title had turned red (and glossy). There were A.S. King words over my name. The back cover was different, too.
What had happened here?
A little detective work with Annie and Pam as the night wound down, and I learned this:
One Thing Stolen has gone into a second printing and Chronicle Books has taken the time to dress the book up newly—new color, Amy's words. It's like those wondrous moments when I come in from a very long day and discover folded laundry on the kitchen table, the work of a secret elf. This thing had been done, quietly done, and there was my gratitude again.
So many, many thanks to Pam and Annie of Radnor, to my friends who came, to the ladies of the Wayne Art Center (oh we, the Hidden Gems), to Kelly, Cyndi, Marie, Tom, Hilary, Bill, another Bill, and Dad, and to Temple University Press, which gave me
Love: A Philadelphia Affair and Chronicle Books, which gave me a second printing of
One Thing Stolen as well as the gorgeous cover and packaging (and Taylor, thank you for caring so much, you read it again and then again with care; you kept asking; you kept pressing; I am grateful) of
This Is the Story of 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.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 3/19/2015
Blog:
Beth Kephart Books
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In just a few hours, I'll be on the Bryn Mawr campus with my dear friend
Cynthia Reeves and her students to talk about
Handling the Truth, Flow, the empathetic imagination, the past and the present and—well—I have far too much planned for the hour and twenty minutes we have, but I guess that is who I have become. Persistent. Insistent. Still wrecked and unreasonable with the impossibility of it all.
But this one
One Thing Stolen thing before I go. The novel, due out shortly, is, as I have written
here on Huffington Post, about a neurodegenerative disease—about the slow peeling away of my Nadia's language and historical self. Nadia, in
One Thing Stolen, becomes trapped in a cycle of art making. She cannot stop herself.
A few weeks ago, Taylor Norman, a young and wondrously talented editor at Chronicle Books, took the time to send me this true story of a former lawyer whose traumatic brain injury resulted in the emergence of an unexpected artistic talent. This is art arising from injury and not disease. But it is, in so many ways, a story that yields insights into Nadia and into the question: Are we are in ultimate control over our artistic leanings, aesthetics, impulses? Can we definitively source the many ways that story, color, and shape erupt in us?
I would wager that we aren't, and that we can't.
From the story that Taylor sent that first appeared in the
NY Daily News: Doctors diagnosed Fagerberg with a traumatic brain injury. He suffered memory loss and had problems with processing language.
The accident ended his legal career. To cope, he turned to art therapy - and suddenly realized that he had a particular gift for painting.
"A little trigger went off and I became hooked. It became a compulsion," Fagerberg told KHOU, adding: "I see everything sort of in composition, so everywhere I look it's a painting."
The whole story, and a video, can be found here.
There's a very special young woman at Chronicle Books (I think I've mentioned this) named Taylor Norman. Has books—and kindness (and smarts)—in her blood. Is out there reading our manuscripts, tweeting our stories, talking about our books, talking us off cliffs if, indeed, we find ourselves standing on cliffs.
A few days ago, Taylor, who, read
One Thing Stolen, my novel about Florence, Italy, art, obsession, and mental wellness, when it wasn't much of a book at all (oh, poor Tamra, and oh, poor Taylor), sent this link from
The New Yorker. It tells the tale of an exquisite fiber artist, Judith Scott, whose work involved the making of secrets—embedding umbrellas and tree branches and other found objects within weaves and knots.
But that is not all of who Judith was. Judith was a twin sister, born with Down syndrome, whose profound deafness went undiagnosed while she lived out her years in an institution. Here is
the story, in the words of
New Yorker writer Andrea K. Scott:
Scott died in 2005, at the age of sixty-one, and didn’t start making art until her mid-forties. She was born with Down syndrome, went deaf as a child, and never learned how to speak. Languishing in an institution in her native Ohio for more than three decades with her deafness undiagnosed, Scott was considered so beyond help that she wasn’t allowed to use crayons. In 1986, her fraternal twin, Joyce, brought Scott to San Francisco and enrolled her in Creative Growth, a community art center for disabled adults. At first, Scott dabbled in drawings. A smattering are in the show, but they’re no match for the radical beauty that followed, when Scott took a textile workshop and had a breakthrough, loosely binding sticks into an uncanny totemic cluster. As her work gained complexity, the Bay Area began to take note; by 2001, Scott had been the subject of major shows in Switzerland, Japan, and New York.
So much about this story sears. And yes, Taylor, this reminds me, in so many ways, of Nadia Cara, my character, whose art is also a secret as well as a compulsion coming from a secret place.
Judith Scott's work is now on display at the Brooklyn Museum. I intend to see it.
This is wonderful, Beth, and greatly deserved. I know I've enjoyed This is The Story of You. Many congratulations to you and to your husband for being featured in the art exhibit. All the best to you both. Have a wonderful holiday season!