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By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 9/19/2015
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Beth Kephart Books
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I had a summer that didn't use much of my mind, so then I lost words. And my body, too, began to dwindle, only I gained weight in the process.
So when Jessica Lowenthal invited me to the reception honoring Julia Bloch, the new director of Creative Writing at Penn, I had many concerns. One: my wrong hair. Two: my wrong shoes. Also (like I told Jay Kirk and then Greg Djanikian and maybe even Tom Devaney and Avery Rome and Stephen Fried, but not my students Nina and David, or maybe I did, because I don't know, I was feeling irresponsible, and did I tell Al Filreis, too?, but I know I did not so burden Jamie-Lee Josselyn, Lorene Carey, Max or Sam Apple, at least I hope not), I had lost my personality. Left it somewhere. In the summer.
(Perhaps that's a good thing?)
But I went anyway, talking to my son by phone while in transit so that I would not turn back because, as I have noted, everything about me was not quite right, and if I'd not been talking with him, I'd have talked myself back onto the train and headed reverse west, for home.
Then I crossed the threshold at Kelly Writers House (there's always a little thrill involved) and everything changed. The place was just, well, filling up. With faculty members I respect and love, and students I adore. Soon (or, it actually happened first) Jessica herself was taking me on a tour of the new Wexler studio, and bam. I didn't look right, but something happened. I felt as if I belonged.
Then the star of our evening, the star of our program, stepped forward and faced a crowded, beaming room and began to read poems from
Valley Fever (Sidebrow Books) and
Hollywood Forever (Little Red Leaves Journal & Press, the Textile Series) and I, sitting there in the front row, began to feel a hot little prickle inside my head. Like the blank nothing of my thoughts was getting Braille-machine punched by all the delicious oddness of Julia's phrasing and syntax, occasionally repurposed lines, jokes I got and maybe didn't always entirely get (because, as I always say and forever mean, I am just not that smart). Julia was talking and then (I heard this) she was singing, but without any change in the pitch of her voice. Singing by exuding whole phrases in one long breath, then stopping (beat/beat) and starting again. It was like being driven in a car with the windows down, at night, when there is a lot of open road but also some bright red traffic lights.
Damn, I thought.
What do I mean, how can I explain this? These coupled and uncoupled ideas, the surreality of words you assume have been fashioned from parts, the winnowed down ideas that, when toppled and stacked, say something.
Mean something. Even if you can't actually always articulate what you have been stung by, you know you have been stung.
Here is half of "Wolverine," from
Valley Fever, a poem I instinctively love, also a poem I will ponder for quite some time.
Wolverine
I was only pretending
to be epiphanic
she said, tossing the whole
day over the embankment.
Is the heart collandered
or semiprecious
filled with holes
and therefore filled with light —
....
This afternoon, following a morning of work and a conversation with a friend, I read Julia's two books through, cover to cover. I hovered. I felt that warm thing happen again in my head, that invitation I will, as a writer and reader, always accept—to slam and scram the words around, to make the heart inside the brain beat again.
Thank you, Julia, for making my brain heart beat again.
And. You are going to be terrific. You already are.
With thanks to Avery Rome and Kevin Ferris, who made a home for my stories in the
Philadelphia Inquirer, with thanks to Temple University Press for binding these essays and photos into a single volume, and with thanks to some very special early readers—today is the day for
Love: A Philadelphia Affair.It's on sale now.
Over the next few weeks and months I'll be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Fairmount Water Works (in concert with other speakers), sharing the Free Library stage with Marciarose Shestack, returning to the beloved Radnor Memorial Library, teaching memoir to high school students in Bethlehem, PA, conducting an in-depth memoir workshop in Frenchtown, NJ, joining an exquisite panel of young adult writers, reviewers, and educators at Bank Street in New York, thinking out loud about home with dear friends Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, A.S. King, and Margo Rabb (at Penn), and participating in a variety of other talks and signings.
I'd love to see you along the way.
September 10, 2015, 10:30 AM200th Anniversary of the Fairmount Water WorksFairmount Water Works Philadelphia, PA (open to public) September 21, 2015, all day
Handling the Truth/All School Read
Day-long workshop event
Moravian Academy
Bethlehem, PA(private event) October 7, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Launch of Love: A Philadelphia Affair
with Marciarose Shestack
Free Library of Philadelphia
Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA(open to public)
October 15, 2015
My Philadelphia Stories at
The Philadelphia Rotary Club
Philadelphia Union League
Philadelphia, PA(private event)
October 20, 2015, 7:30 p.m.
Radnor Memorial Library
A Celebration of One Thing Stolen
and Love: A Philadelphia Affair
114 W. Wayne Avenue
Wayne, PA 19087(open to public) October 21, 2015The Cultural Series at Kennedy House1901 JFK BoulevardPhiladelphia, PA(private event)October 24, 2015
Panelist
BookFest @ Bank Street
Bank Street College of Education
610 West 112th Street
New York, NY (registration required) October 25, 2015, 4 p.m.
Love: A Philadelphia Affair signing
Main Point Books
1041 W. Lancaster Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA(open to public) November 1, 2015, 2:00 PMLOVE and FLOW Women for Greater PhiladelphiaLaurel Hill Mansion Philadelphia, PA(private event)November 15, 2015Memoir Workshop In-store receptionThe RatOrganized by The Book Garden Frenchtown, NJ(registration required)November 16, 2015LOVE, TRUTH, and GOING OVERFrenchtown, NJ-area high school(private event) December 3, 2015, 7 PMLOVE signingChester County BooksWest Chester, PA(open to public)
December 5, 2015, noonLOVE signingBarnes and NobleDevon, PA(open to public)
March 1, 2016, 6:00 PM
Beltran Family Teaching Award EventFeaturing A.S. King, Margo Rabb, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto,Penn students, and moiKelly Writers HouseUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA(open to public)
April 16, 2016
Little Flower Teen Writing Festival
Keynote Speaker
Little Flower Catholic High School for Teens
Philadelphia, PA May 22, 2016Memoir Workshop(details to be announced)
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 11/20/2014
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Beth Kephart Books
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A year from now, Temple University Press will release
Love: A Philadelphia Affair, a collection of thirty-six essays on the intersection of memory and place. Thirty-eight of my black-and-white photographs will accompany the text.
Some twenty of those essays first appeared in the
Philadelphia Inquirer—pieces I was lucky enough to write for
Inquirer editors Avery Rome and Kevin Ferris.
Others have been written over the past few months for the book itself, taking me into and around the city on days of rain and sun to consider the streets, the architecture, the gardens, the sidewalks, the highs, the lows, and the communities that have played such a powerful role in the ways that I see, the books that I write, and the stories I teach.
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, Dangerous Neighbors (1876 Philadelphia)
, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent (1871 Philadelphia),
Small Damages, Handling the Truth, and even
One Thing Stolen all reflect, in different ways, my love for this region and the people I have met here.
My great thanks to Micah Kleit, Ann Marie Anderson, and Gary Kramer at Temple University Press for helping me to see this dream through. My deep gratitude to Kevin Ferris and Avery Rome, who made my writing about this region such a pleasure. And huge appreciation to my agent Amy Rennert, who saw the details of this project through.
Micah and I wrapped the book up yesterday, from an editorial and photography perspective. I can't wait to hold this book in my hands, to be able to tell the world again and in new ways why I love where I live.
Someday I will find a way to express the (what is the word?) (joy?) that I experienced yesterday as Michael Sokolove, the phenomenally gifted author of
Drama High, among other books, and the equally gifted editor, Avery Rome, joined my class and Avery's class at Kelly Writers House on the Penn campus.
Michael read, we talked, we learned, we appreciated.
My students wrote and asked and listened.
It may have been raining like the world was ending yesterday.
But inside our room, we were all just getting a good, fresh start.
Thank you.
In a week or so, a video tape of our conversation and mini workshop will be available. I'll post that link when I have it. Then, at last, you can see for yourself how lucky I am to adjunct at Penn, to work with editors like Avery, and to invite a big-hearted, super writer like Michael into the midst.
Wait until you see.
My dear friends Elizabeth Mosier and Chris Mills sent me this photo last night, following their excursion to Radnor Memorial Library.
We writers live in the forest of doubt, or at least this writer does. This photo startled me—this idea of a dear librarian (Pam Sedor) taking the time to locate my books and to place them all on one wall. This idea of a celebration going on while I've been going on elsewhere.
I forget, often, about the words I've left behind. I focus, too often, on what must be done
right now, on what isn't done yet.
I neglect to pause. This celebration at Radnor Memorial Library—discovered by friends—is cause for a pause.
We'll be celebrating
Going Over at this very Radnor Memorial Library on April 30, 7:30. This will be my only formal reading from the book, and this party is open to all; cake will be served. Please join us.
In the meantime, today, I am celebrating the work of Michael Sokolove and editor Avery Rome at the University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House. My class has read Sokolove's fantastic
Drama High. We have questions. We look forward to reflection, to a deep and true conversation.
In today's
Philadelphia Inquirer I yearn toward dance, mourn my countless non-capabilities, and conclude, well — read on. The story begins like this, below, and can be found in its entirety
here.
How I stood, how I sat, how I walked into a room and didn't possess it - these were concerns. Also: the untamed wilderness of my hair, but we would get to that. In addition: the way I hid behind my clothes and failed their easy angles. Most troubling, perhaps: my tendency to rush, my feverish impatience with myself, my heretofore undiagnosed problem with the art of being led.
So I thought I could dance.
So I imagined the ballroom instructors leaning in to say - first rumba or perhaps the second - "You've got a knack for this."
What knack? What had I done? Why had I not realized that dancing in the dark alone to Bruce Springsteen does not qualify anyone for the cha-cha? That grace is not necessarily an elevated pointer finger? That how they do it on TV is how they do it on TV? That just because you love to dance does not a dancer make you?
So many thanks to Avery Rome for making room for the piece, and to DanceSport Academy in Ardmore—and all my teachers—for making room for me. Thanks, too, to a certain Moira. She knows who she is.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 9/13/2012
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For reasons too complex, too personal to render fully here, yesterday was a day of deep emotion.
There were, however, friends all along the way. Elizabeth Mosier, the beauty in the dark gray dress, will always stand, in my mind, on either side of the day—at its beginnings, at its very late-night end. For your mid-day phone kindness, for your breathtaking introduction of me at last night's book launch, for the night on the town, for the talk in the car, for the bounty of your family—Libby, I will always be so grateful.
To Patti Mallet and her friend, Anne, who drove all the way from Ohio to be part of last night's celebration, I will never forget your gesture of great kindness, your love for green things at Chanticleer, and a certain prayer beside my mother's stone. Patti and I are there, above, at the pond which inspired two of my books.
To Pam Sedor, the lovely blonde in violet, a world-class Dragon Boat rower recently returned from an international competition in Hong Kong, the librarian who makes books happen and dreams come true, and to Molly, who puts up with my techno anxieties, and to Radnor Memorial Library, for being my true home—thank you, always.
To my friends who came (from church, from books, from architecture, from corporate life, from the early years through now)—thank you. Among you were Avery Rome, the beautiful red-head who edits Libby, me, and others at the
Philadelphia Inquirer, and Kathy Barham, my brilliant and wholly whole son's high school English teacher, who is also a poet (shown here in green). To the town of Wayne, which received our open-air tears and laughter late into the night (and to Cyndi, Kelly, Libby, Avery, and Kathye who cried and laughed with me)—thank you.
And also, finally, to Heather Mussari—my muse (along with Tamra Tuller) for the Berlin novel, a young lady so wise beyond her years, and a cool, cool chick who (along with Sandy) does my hair—I arrived at 11:15 at your shop inconsolable. You listened. You said all the right things by telling the truth and telling it kindly. I adore you, Heather. I hope you know that.
This past Monday, my son and I traveled to the Jersey Shore—Stone Harbor—to see my brother, his wife, and their two children. They've been renting a place there for a long time now, and barring unforeseen circumstances, I join them for a day each year. I took some photographs on Monday for an essay Avery Rome had invited me to write, and today I'm privileged to have the piece appear
here, in the Currents section of the
Philadelphia Inquirer.I share the first paragraph of my remembrances of, and nostalgia for, Stone Harbor, below. But before I do, I'd like to share this—a photograph of my brother and sister, sand sculpture-ers supreme, taken years ago.
In the same way that I believed in black raspberry ice cream, blue-fingered crab, and the pink sheen of a flipped shell, I believed, as a kid, in the Jersey Shore, specifically Stone Harbor. It possessed me and I possessed it those two weeks of every year when our parents would pack the caroming car with suits, rafts, shovels, pails, rusty-bottomed beach chairs, crab traps, tangled reels, and (where there was still room) my brother, my sister, and me.
Several weeks ago, Avery Rome of the
Philadelphia Inquirer got in touch with a question. Would I be interested in writing in occasional pieces for the paper's Currents section? Pieces about my intersection with my city and its fringes, perhaps. Pieces about the people I meet or the questions I have. Avery has been at work at the
Inquirer through many seasons—vital and invigorating, disciplined and rigorous, enriching the pages with literature and poetics, even, with different and differing points of view. If the
Inquirer has gone through many phases, it has always been clear on one thing: Avery Rome is indispensable.
Would I be interested? she'd asked.
Well, who would not be? I'd have reason to sit and talk with Avery, for one thing, which is a pleasure every time. And I would be joined in these pages by two incredibly special women, Karen Rile and Elizabeth Mosier. Both are first-rate teachers and mentors—Karen at Penn and Elizabeth at Bryn Mawr College. Both write sentences that thrill me, stories that impress. Both are mothers of children I love, children whose plays I have gone to, whose art I have worn, whose questions have made me think, whose inner beauty is as transparent as their outer gorgeousness. And both are very essential friends.
Karen and Elizabeth's zinging essays have already appeared in the
Inquirer and can be found
here and
here.
My piece appears today. It was commissioned and written during the high heat of last week, before the gentling rains of this weekend. It takes me back to Chanticleer, a garden that inspired two of my books (
Ghosts in the Garden, Nothing but Ghosts) and is a source of escape, still. The essay ends with these words and includes two of my photographs of small, sacred places at this gorgeous pleasure garden:
In the high heat of this summer I find myself again returning to Chanticleer — walking the garden alone or with friends. The sunflowers, gladiola, and hollyhocks are tall in the cutting garden. The water cascades (a clean sheet of cool) over the stone faces of the ruins and sits in a black hush in the sarcophagus. Bursts of color illuminate the dark shade of the Asian Woods. The creek runs thin but determined.
I don't know why I am forever surprised by all this. I don't know how it is that a garden I know so well — its hills, its people, its tendencies, its blocks of shade — continues to startle me, to teach me, to remind me about the sweet, cheap thrill of unbusyness, say, or the impossibility of perfect control. We do not commandeer nature — gardeners know this best of all. We are born of it, live with it, are destined for return.
Dust to dust, yes. But why not shade and blooms in between? Why not gardens in this summer of infernal, angry heat?
Wishing us all more rain, less heat, and the goodness of editors who love words, gardens that still grow, friendships that nurture, and children who move us on this Sunday morning.
This is the season during which the work days never end, and the skies darken for long stretches, and the rains come, and the tree limbs scratch their chaos into the tired stucco walls of this house.
This is that season, again.
But last night, through what was cold and what was dark, I made my way by train and collapsed umbrella to the University of Pennsylvania campus, which Al Filreis and Greg Djanikian have turned into a second home for me. I traveled there to hear
New Yorker editor David Remnick speak of journalism—then and now. I traveled to sit with my dear student Kim, and to hear of her life, how it unfolding. I traveled for the chance to chat with the great fiction writer and teacher, Max Apple. I traveled to sit among students intent on learning all they can—there, here, now—and among teachers and working writer/editors (Dick Pohlman, Avery Rome, more) who are generous with their own stories.
A gift, all of it.
Fun article, Beth! Thanks for sharing your encouraging qualms. As you know, I very much enjoy your dance videos - and aspire to such grace of movement. But the reality is that I'm much more of a dancing in the dark w/ Bruce kind of girl. (Where I rule the floor.) :)
Great news Beth!!! And what is this about a book on Berlin?? Will you be traveling here to Germany to get some inspiration???
JV
Great news Beth!! What is this about a book on Berlin? Will you be traveling here to Germany for some inspiration? Please keep me posted!
JV