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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Sarah Laurence, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 7 of 7
1. Sarah Laurence reflects (so kindly) on THIS IS THE STORY OF YOU

Sarah Laurence, who posts beautiful images from her coastal-Maine life and wide imagination on her popular blog, has been so kind to me in my journey as a young adult novelist. Asking for and reading the books, thinking about them, making powerful and important observations, introducing me to her friend, Cathy Fiebach, of Main Point Books in Bryn Mawr, PA, where I'll be doing the first area signing of the book featured above at 2 PM on April 30.

This is what Sarah does for others' books—even as she writes her own.

In the quiet months leading up to the launch (this coming Tuesday) of This Is the Story of You, Sarah asked for a copy. Yesterday she shared her thoughts.

I hope she knows how much this means to me.

I'm sharing just a fragment of Sarah's Story post here, so that you'll be forced to read the rest on Sarah's blog itself. I hope you stay there for awhile, and poke around to see what else Sarah has to say about words, stories, and place.

This is a Story of You is a modern parable of the horrors of climate change. When a storm cuts off an island from the Jersey Shore, 17-year-old Mira must fight for survival with only a stray cat for company. Earlier that day, her single mom had driven her disabled brother to the mainland hospital for emergency treatment. As the storm rages and the sea floods their beachside cottage, Mira must decide what to save and how to stay alive. If that weren't scary enough, a mysterious intruder is lurking outside, and without power or cellular service, Mira can't call for help.

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2. One Thing Stolen. Today is the (second) day. It's also the day My Spectaculars and I meet Jeff Hobbs via Skype.

One Thing Stolen has had a two-step launch—last Tuesday, this Tuesday—and that seems to fit this old amateur dancer just fine.

Today I want to thank all of you who have been so kind to this book in its early days—who took the reading risk, who made room for Nadia and Maggie, and Katherine, Florence and West Philadelphia, neuroscience and a raging flood, who wrote words of encouragement. I don't write books that fit into established patterns, and there are, of course, consequences. But I can't imagine doing books or this life any other way, and I'm so grateful to be on this journey with you. I'm grateful, too, to the entire Chronicle Books team and to my editor Tamra Tuller.

In lieu of a launch party for One Thing Stolen, I'll be traveling to a few local venues to talk either about this book or about the writing life. The events are here, below. If you are out and about, I'd love to see you.

April 18, 2015
Little Flower High School Teen Writers & Readers Festival
Little Flower High
Philadelphia, PA

April 23, 2015
Let Us Be Honest
A New Directions in Writing Memoir Workshop
Residence Inn
Pentagon City, VA
details here

May 3, 2015, 1 PM
Schulykill River/FLOW presentation
Ryerss Museum
7370 Central Avenue
Philadelphia, PA

May 20, 2105, 7 PM
Body, Mind, Heart, Soul:
The Whole Self in Contemporary YA
IW Gregorio, Beth Kephart, Margo Rabb, Tiffany Schmidt
Children's Book World
Haverford, PA

June 5 - 7, various times
Moravian College Writers Conference
Keynote Address, Panel, Conversation with A.S. King
Foy Hall
Priscilla Payne Hurd Campus
More information here

June 27, 1 - 5 PM
Arcadia University
Creative Writing Summer Weekend
Master Class/Reading/Q&A
450 South Easton Road
Glenside, PA 19038
More information here


Additionally, I am grateful for the blog tour, which begins today and was organized by Lara Starr of Chronicle Books. A schedule can be found here.

Finally, I'm grateful for these recent reviews, fragments presented here. To read all official trade reviews as well as some early blog reviews, press releases, and the official teaching guide, please go here.

BookPage
One Thing Stolen explores themes of destruction and rejuvenation, emphasizing the possibilities and hope found in disaster. This is a unique and engrossing exploration of how characters deal with the pain and beauty of the real world. — Annie Metcalf 

Sarah Laurence
One This Stolen offers no easy solutions but still leaves the reader with hope. I'd strongly recommend this literary novel to adults and to teenagers who are interested in psychology, art, history and Italy. Kephart does a marvelous job with a difficult topic.— Sarah Laurence


And now I am off to Penn, to teach my immaculate Spectaculars and to meet a few prospective Quakers who sound spectacular in their own specific ways. We're hosting the superlative Jeff Hobbs via Skype today. Jeff's The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is a seminal reflection on possibilities and choices (my thoughts on it here), and he's going to tell us how it came to be.

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3. a robust and thoughtful tween list from Sarah Laurence; some nice news for GOING OVER

I got behind on this day—a book to read and review, some client care, a trip to the dentist, some forever inadequate taming of the jungle of my garden (oh my), and lunch with a friend whose capacious mind is thrilling, frankly, to be near. What he knows. What he thinks. I sit back and listen.

It is not until just now, then, that I have a moment to thank Sarah Lamport Laurence for a list of tween books that has a lot of people talking. People are looking for Sarah's kind of thinking about books all the time, and today she put together a most valued collection of recommended reads for tween readers. I am honored to find both Dangerous Neighbors and Undercover included.

Additionally I am grateful to Junior Library Guild for making today its Going Over day. And I am thankful to Indigo for placing my Berlin novel on its Best Teen Books of 2014 So Far list.



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4. Dear Teen Me, Grown-up Pottery Love, and Going Over/Dr. Radway Kindness


Oh, those beautiful pottery ladies. There I was, minding my own clay business, when I saw Karen the Good, who also goes by Queen of Wayne, sneak by. What is that lady doing? I wondered, then went back to trying to figure out how to make my latest project stable.

The next time I looked up, the ladies had gathered around and they were singing. They were singing a birthday song.

How I love them all.

(Bill, the honorary pottery lady, took the photo of the group, but I love him, too.)

So a huge thank you to my friends, and to Karen, for remembering—and for singing—so poignantly well. And the timing is—well—something else, for just this morning I had been remembering a surprise party my mother had thrown for me when I was sixteen years old. Somehow she'd gotten Jim Clancy, Radnor High basketball star, to my basement, along with ice skaters and other friends. I had not had the slightest inkling that something was in the works. I miss my mother on many days, and always on my birthday, and there were the ladies, on this day, stepping in.

So who was the teen me? I write of her here, on Dear Teen Me, today. The piece begins like this:

You do not have to be good. You don’t have to try so hard. You don’t have to stay so very still inside that box that you have built up for yourself.

Life is meant for living.

Listen.
On a day in which so much kindness overflows that I hardly know what to do, or how many ways I can say thank you, I share these beautiful things as well:

Shelf Awareness shared the Going Over trailer as the Trailer of the Day, here.

Sarah Laurence reviewed Going Over so incredibly beautifully here.

And Melissa Firman very kindly makes room for, and say such nice things about, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, here.



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5. what does "best of" mean? how does it change us?

A few days ago, Lynn Rosen, the editorial director of the Publishing Business Group, wrote to ask me about those end-of year lists we see so often in the book business.  What are they?  What do they mean?  How are they created?  How do they affect us?  She asked, and I (with my always limited knowledge) answered. Our conversation is here.

This morning, while I was waiting for an unexpected visitor to leave the house (okay, so it was the pest control guy, and, all right, if you must know, I was not precisely prepared for the visit, and since you won't stop asking, no, my hair was not combed and my eyes were raccooned), I was scrolling through my blog log and saw that my good friend Danielle Smith of There's a Book had written something about pausing.  I need pause right now, I thought, and so pressed on the link, only to discover that Danielle had included me in her glorious post.  You'll see what I mean, here.

Oh my gosh, new insertion.  Here is Sarah Laurence being uber kind to Small Damages at year's end.
 
So how do I feel about being included in some of these phenomenal lists, mentions, citations, possibilities?  I feel blessed, pure and simple.  I feel outrageously lucky.  I have been writing books for a long time.  I have published many.  I was an outsider from the get-go, but I don't feel so outside anymore.  I feel like I am part of a community.  I feel like there is reason to go on searching for stories and words. 

I want to write.

4 Comments on what does "best of" mean? how does it change us?, last added: 12/17/2012
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6. Small Damages: the cover story and a blogger's thoughtful response

How does a book get a cover?  How does a story emerge as a bright concentrate of itself?

Melissa Walker has been asking authors this question for a long time, and I'm lucky on two counts—Melissa (an author supreme) is my friend, and she has kindly asked me.  I tell the story of the Small Damages cover (and lessons I learned before the Small Damages cover) over on the Barnes and Noble Community Blog, with all thanks to dear Melissa.

I was just about to post this when Cynthia Pittman, a Facebook friend, pointed me toward another act of supreme generosity on this warm July day.  That generosity comes from Sarah Laurence, a so-intelligent, thoughtful reader who is also a writer who is also an artist who is also a woman who has learned to live a magnificently balanced life as a creative artist, mom, wife, and lover of the world beyond.  Sarah read Small Damages lately, and she had this to say.

Melissa and Sarah:  thank you.

4 Comments on Small Damages: the cover story and a blogger's thoughtful response, last added: 7/18/2012
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7. Sarah Laurence takes us to the ponds of Maine...and Undercover

Don't spend a second more on my blog today. Head here, to Sarah Laurence's beautiful blog—rich with her photographs and musings on books and the writing life. This week she's featuring an interview with me (my favorite teen books, my assessment of teen readers, a never-before-seen photo of me in high school, among other things) and a review of Undercover. But more than that, she's sharing her own lovely sensibility. I urge you to take a look.

2 Comments on Sarah Laurence takes us to the ponds of Maine...and Undercover, last added: 3/3/2010
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