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I found this little girl in Berlin. She was mesmerized by the magic of bubbles. I left her city mesmerized as well, and then one day began to write a novel for it. I called that book
We Could Be Heroes. I dedicated it to my editor, Tamra Tuller. It will be launched by Chronicle Books sometime next year, and I've held my breath, as I always do, hoping that it might find its right readers.
I cannot imagine being any more blessed than I am right now, today, by the kindness of two extraordinary readers—two young adult writers who have done so much on the page, done so much for others, done so much to elevate this genre, to prove its power. Thank you, Patricia McCormick and Ruta Sepetys for your words about
We Could Be Heroes.
“Beth Kephart is one of my heroes. She’s spun gold out of the language of longing and has shown us how to make room for miracles. We Could Be Heroes –about a boy and girl separated by the cruelest of fates–will inspire any reader to make the leap for love.”
–Patricia McCormick, author of National Book Award Finalists Sold and Never Fall Down
“An unforgettable portrayal of life and love divided. Kephart captures the beauty and desperation of 1980's Berlin with prose both gripping and graceful.”
--Ruta Sepetys, New York Times bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 12/25/2012
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This is how it happens: I write an adult book that Laura Geringer discovers and reads; she gets in touch. For a year Laura and I talk about how ill-equipped I feel I am to write books for young adults. A conversation in a Philadelphia restaurant changes everything; I am persuaded to try. I write what will become several books for Laura, and in the midst of story development, copy editing, cover design, and publicity, I meet Jill Santopolo—utterly adorable, fashion savvy, super smart, wildly well-organized, and Laura's second in command at Laura Geringer Books/HarperTeen, where I will write four books, one of them (
The Heart is Not a Size) being Jill's very own. Then one day Jill calls to say that she is headed to Philomel to join a children's book empire carved out by a man named Michael Green. I'd really like Michael, Jill says. She hopes I'll eventually meet him.
(She is right. And I do. Facts made true in reverse order.)
A few years later, I see Jill again, this time at an ALA event, where she slips me a copy of
Between Shades of Gray and whispers two words in my ear: Tamra Tuller. Jill and Tamra are, by now, colleagues at Philomel, and Tamra edits the kind of books I like to write. Jill, looking trademark gorgeous, encourages me to read Ruta Sepetys' international bestseller of a debut novel as proof. I do. Again, I am persuaded. Not long afterwards, I have the great privilege of joining the Philomel family when Tamra reads a book I've been working on for ten years and believes that it has merit. Jill has opened her new home to me, and I am grateful.
What happens next is that Tamra moves to Chronicle and I, with a book dedicated to her because I do love her that much, move to Chronicle, too. What happens next is Jill and I remain friends (Jill and I and Michael and Jessica, too (not to mention Laura)). Which is all a very long way of saying how happy I was to receive two of Jill's newest creations just a few weeks ago. Last night and early this morning I read the first of them. It's called
Invisibility, it's due out in May, and it is co-authored by Jill's fabulously successful Philomel author, Andrea Cremer (
The Nightshade Series) and the big-hearted author/editor/sensation/Lover's Dictionary Guru David Levithan.
I hear David Levithan—his soulfulness, his tenderness, his yearning, his love—when I read this book. I hear Andrea Cremer—her careful and credible world building, her necessary specificity, her other-worldly imagination. It's a potent combination in a story about a Manhattan boy whom no one in the world can see. No one, that is, except for the girl who has moved in down the hall—a girl who has escaped Minnesota with a brother she deeply loves and a mother who cares for them both, but must work long hours to keep her transplanted family afloat. Cremer and Levithan's Manhattan is tactile, navigable, stewing with smells and scenes. Their fantasy world—spellcraft, curses, witches, magic—is equally cinematic and engaging. The love between the invisible boy and the seeing (and, as it turns out, magically gifted) girl feels enduring, and then there's that other kind of love—between Elizabeth and her brother—that gives this story even greater depth and meaning. The parents aren't nearly bad either (not at all).
What it is to be invisible. What it is to see and be seen. What it is to know there is evil in the world and that any strike against it will scar and (indeed) age those who take a stand.
Invisibility is a fantasy story, but it is more than that, too. It's a growing-up story in which courage, truth-telling, sacrifice, and vulnerability figure large, and in which love of every kind makes a difference.
I have written many times on this blog about the exquisite writer and human being, Ruta Sepetys. I am lucky to know her—it's that simple—and the gift of our friendship is a gift that Tamra Tuller, our Philomel editor, gave. Tamra sent Ruta a copy of
Small Damages a long time ago, and Ruta not only lent her voice to this story, but she stayed in touch, sending notes from all around the world as she met with teachers, parents, and children to discuss her international bestseller,
Between Shades of Gray—and, later, to prepare us for the February 2013 release of her absolutely lovely second book,
Out of the Easy.Home for Ruta is states away from here. Life for Ruta is many obligations which she, with all the grace of a true diplomat, seamlessly fulfills. Still, on July 19th, the day
Small Damages was released into the world, Ruta thought to send me a gift.
Enclosed is a little cake, not quite full of taste, but certainly full of love, she wrote.
It had been my son's birthday, and then my husband's. There was endless corporate work to do.
My party for this little book was two months away. But there Ruta was, reminding me to take a moment for this book that had consumed ten years of my life and almost (so many times) vanished. Her cake will always sit among my treasured things, a reminder:
Take a moment.
Today, taking a page from Ruta, I stop to remind us all.
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.
When you write as I do—in between things and only after everything else is done—you begin to wonder if this percolating creature is any good, if you will want it (someday) to belong to you. I have been working at the oddest hours of night on Florence, then putting the novel aside, then returning. I have not been able to hold the whole in my hands. I have been frustrated by fragments.
Last night, in the sweetest chocolate fold of 4 AM, I returned to Florence, read these first 120 pages through. It coheres, I think, and it interests me deeply. It is the book that I want to keep writing.
And so I send the first 25,000 words to Tamra Tuller, now at Chronicle Books. I want the conversation we will have as this story and its people take me deeper into their strange and (to me) beautiful and abiding mystery.
Yesterday, Tamra Tuller and I finished the copy editing work on my Berlin 1983 novel,
We Could Be Heroes: Just for One Day. Due out from Chronicle in early 2014, the book sprung from a conversation I had with Tamra and from travels to a city I did not expect to love as much as I most fervently did.
With flap copy for
Heroes now finalized, I have the green light to share that with you. Little by little,
Heroes now makes its way into the world.
The photograph above is not the cover, of course. But it is a glimpse of the Berlin I found in the summer of 2011.
It is February 1983, and Berlin is a divided city—a miles-long barricade separating east from west. But the city isn’t the only thing that is divided. Ada, almost 16, lives with her mother and grandmother among the rebels, punkers, and immigrants of Kreuzberg, just west of the wall. Stefan, 18, lives east with his brooding grandmother in a faceless apartment bunker of Friedrichshain, his telescope pointed toward freedom. Bound by love and separated by circumstance, their only chance lies in a high-risk escape. But will Stefan find the courage to leap? Will Ada keep waiting for the boy she has only seen four times a year ever since she can remember? Or will forces beyond their control stand in their way?
Told in the alternating voices of the pink-haired graffiti artist and the boy she loves, We Could Be Heroes: Just for One Day is a story of daring and sacrifice, choices and consequences, and love that will not wait.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 5/31/2012
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If I am too exhausted to state with any inch of eloquence how grateful I am for today—for being included in a well-run, truly substantive, inviting conference, for sitting on a panel among greats, for meeting, at long last, the delightful Jenny Brown, for spying on Roger Sutton's socks, for a chance to hurry through a loved city's streets, for an excuse to visit the extraordinarily wonderful Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo, for the opportunity to meet the funny and fun and winning Lauren Marino—if I am too exhausted, might I at least share these two images of a conference I won't forget?
Thank you, Ed Nawotka and Dennis Abrams of
Publishing Perspectives for making this day what it was. For making me a part of it.
Yesterday I sent dear Tamra Tuller of Philomel the revised Berlin novel. A few days before, HANDLING THE TRUTH went off to Lauren Marino at Gotham, and the week prior to that DR. RADWAY'S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT was emailed to its publisher, a package made complete by my husband's eleven illustrations.
It has been, in other words, a heady time—my thoughts, in overlapping intervals, inside a certain German city, circa 1983, inside a century's worth of 100 memoirs, and inside 1871 Philadelphia and the cacophony of Baldwin Locomotive Works.
But it was my office that was really showing the heat.
That space is so much neater now. It's dusted and Windexed and vacuumed, too. It's a place for starting over in, and that is what I'll be doing over the next many weeks. I'll be back at work on corporate projects. I'll be doing some teaching, some reviewing, some author interviewing, some essay writing. I'll be reading some 20 new books and celebrating them here, on my blog, with the world.
And I'll be launching SMALL DAMAGES.
It will be an untangling time. It will be awhile, I suspect, before I begin to dream about any new books.
In the heat of the summer, after a night of hail and thunder clashes, a white package arrives on my stoop. It's a book that I've been longing for—an early copy of
Out of the Easy by the tremendously talented, radiantly successful, and I-know-it-for-a-fact-good-hearted Ruta Sepetys.
This book will, I'm sure, be as beloved as Ruta's first, the
New York Times bestselling, multiple-award winning, translated-into-every-conceivable-language
Between Shades of Gray. I just have a feeling, and besides, this is a Tamra Tuller Philomel book. We know that that's a formula that works.
I'm all done with my complicated sentences. I'm going to spend the weekend reading this book. I'll let you know how great it is, so that you can look for it eagerly in February 2013, when it officially debuts.
A long time ago I drew the conclusion that I was luckier than any girl had the right to be.
Today, proof absolute with these heart-expanding words from
Family Circle Executive Editor Darcy Jacobs. She uses them to recommend
Small Damages to her associate editor, Celia, in the August issue of the magazine. Darcy's goodness to me is unparalleled. I don't have the words.
A million thanks to Jessica Shoffel at Philomel, who does her job so exquisitely well, and to Tamra Tuller, who chose to read my book when it arrived at the old slush pile two years ago. What an adventure we have had since then.
Kephart is a linguistic Midas—everything she puts to paper is golden, including this gem.
The dignity of Ruta Sepetys is telegraphed from afar. It's in the books she writes—the international sensation
Between Shades of Gray and now (coming in February 2013)
Out of the Easy. It's plain as day in her interviews, her commentary, her
web site, her broadcast segments. And if you ever have the chance to meet her (and I'm lucky; I briefly have), it's all right there in her face. Ruta isn't a writer simply and only because she wants to be a writer. She's a writer because she has something to say.
She's a writer, too, who knows the value of deep research—the liberating and liberalizing ways that rooting around in both personal and world history, in the files of the Soviet secret police and the murky streets of the historic French Quarter, in old maps and and the catalogs of Smith College, in the workings of all kinds of watches will, when pondered long enough, when tacked and quilted, generate story. Research, particularly historic research, can be hard to master and harder to contain. Ruta makes it look easy. What she knows never trumps the many things that she imagines.
I spent today lying in a steamy east-coast house, circa 2012, reading Ruta's delectable new circa 1950s New Orleans novel. Often I forgot just where I actually was as I slid into the dream, drifted in and out of the old bookstore (and the chatter, always smart, about books), had a good old walkabout in the brothel (equal parts gaudy and opulent), and fell in with
Easy's seventeen-year-old heroine, Josie. Josie has found her way despite her mother's poor profession, witless selfishness, and fancy for bad men. She's a spitfire, an I'll-do-it-myself-er, a girl walking around with a pile of lies but without a dent in her actual morality. She's the favorite of the wily, big-hearted madam known as Willie. She's loved by two boys—Patrick, her co-worker at the bookstore, and Jesse, a beautiful boy with a mysterious past—not to mention a whole lot of poor souls who make her tattered life rich. Josie's mother's on the lam and Josie's in trouble, and there will be murder, mayhem, lies, sacrifice, and choices before this story is through. There'll be a whole lot of color and New Orleans twang, a rip-roaring cast, and, always, Ruta's intelligent sense of humor, not to mention instructions from Dickens.
Easy, which is a Tamra Tuller book, which is to say a Philomel book, which is to say the product of a remarkable book family headed by Michael Green, sounds spectacularly like then (the details are so right, their webbing-in so clever), but it resonates for now. It's going to generate a whole lot of book love when it debuts next winter.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 7/19/2012
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The most important thing about this day is that it marks my son's twenty-third birthday. He came into the world after thirty-six hours of labor. He had a full head of thick, black hair. He reached for my husband's finger and squeezed it tight. The next day, we drove him to my mother's house in a beat-up Ford Mustang—his hat still on despite the July heat.
There's no accounting for a mother's love. There's no math that will contain it. The baby became a boy became a kid became a man—so bright, so inventive, so funny, so adventuresome, so thoughtful, and with a raft of terrific friends, and with a future that seems (thanks to some recent interviews) so close and within reach, and with a talent for loving.
That boy traveled to Spain with me and my husband, several times, to visit my brother-in-law. We together met characters like an old man named Luis, and like a count who raised Spain's prized fighting bulls. We traveled out to a broad cortijo, watched the gypsies dance, sat front row at flamenco shows. We ate paella at midnight on the streets, tapas in tiny bars. We went in and out of bull rings and up cathedral towers and in between the narrow spaces of Seville. We watched the nuns flutter by. We saw children playing on rooftops. And when I started to write a novel with all of this as the backdrop, this son of mine listened to me read out loud—this passage or that at the kitchen table. He steered the ship with his spare comments and would not let me give up in the face of grave disappointments. He said, "Believe in yourself."
I don't think there would be a
Small Damages without this guy, and that brings us to birthday number two.
Small Damages, a book that has always been dedicated to my son, is being launched today. That it is a book, that it has come this far, is all thanks to the extremely extraordinary Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo of Philomel. That it has been welcomed into this world is all thanks to the generosity of readers and bloggers and reviewers and interviewers, whose goodness is unfathomable and restorative and redeeming and proof that maybe a girl can write and write and write and not be especially famous, but keep writing, and then have a moment in time like this one.
An unforgettable moment in time.
To all of you, and to my agent Amy Rennert, who has been there through all fourteen books, thick and thin (and so much thin), thank you.
Cake is now being served for all.
The icing is here, in these words from the great (truly great)
Pam van Hylckama of Bookalicious.org and in this kindness from the ever-kind and supportive
Serena Agusto-Cox.
From Pam:
It is not often that a book that makes you lose your breath. You read novel that makes you want t
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Beth Kephart ,
on 7/24/2012
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I wanted to find a pair of cowgirl boots for my friend Caroline Leavitt, to thank her for making room for me on her roost today, but the best I could do was this sign, photographed in Nashville four years ago, which sat (you'll have to believe me) right near a cowboy/cowgirl boot store. Why I didn't think to photograph the boots themselves is beyond me. What is not beyond me, at this moment, is gratitude. For Caroline's friendship. For her own talent. For conversations we have had in public and in private as we both journey through this writing life. I don't even know how Caroline got an early copy of
Small Damages, but she had one. She's in the midst of writing a brand new book, and she made time to read it. Then she asked me excellent questions, the kind of questions one who knows another well can ask.
I answered them all here.Among the things we discussed is how much I love Philomel, and how I made my way to this great place to begin with. I extract a small fraction of our conversation below, but hope you will visit Leavittville for more.
Philomel is exquisite. At Philomel I have a home. There I have never felt like a fringe writer, a secondary writer, a marginal, will-she-please-fit-a-category, we’ll-get-to-you-when-we-get-to-you writer. Michael Green, Philomel’s president, is a most generous person, and correspondent. Tamra—beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, embracing—approached the editing of this book, the design of its cover, and the preparation of it for the world with the greatest care, and in the process we became great friends. Jessica Shoffel, a wildly wonderful and innovative publicist, wrote me a note I’ll never forget after she read the book and her devotion to getting the word out has been unflagging, sensational. The sales team got in touch a long time ago and has stayed in touch. And on and on.
But no, I never knew I would shine. I don’t think of myself as a diamond or a star. I never think in those terms. I just keep writing my heart out. And when you are collaborating with a house like Philomel, when you are given room, when your questions are answered, when you are given a chance, there are possibilities.
It took me a while to find my next book. The one that is to come after
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent (New City Community Press/Temple University Press/March 2013)
, Handling the Truth (Gotham/August 2013)
, and
We Could Be Heroes, Just for One Day (Phliomel/Winter 2014). It had occurred to me that I might have said everything I ever had to say. That I had shadowed all the characters, or ideas, or places, that could ever mean something deeply real to me.
And so I read—not to find a next book for my beloved editor, Tamra Tuller, but to satisfy hollow places within. I wrote essays—short pieces about landscapes and people, inquiries into the art of literature or the state of young adult tales, profiles of writers whose work intrigues me, reviews of new and forthcoming books. I planned road trips (south, this coming September) and dreamed of returning to Europe. I listened to Springsteen songs until even I knew it was time to stop. I watched documentary films. I cooked. I went to two different beaches on two different days. I tried not to ask myself, What? Next?
Still,
what next crept in, slow, on a sideways angle. It arrived via old memories, new readings, and an urge to take five paragraphs that I wrote a dozen or so years ago and turn them into the start of something new.
What next beat its feverish wings at me. I began to buy books, to take notes.
I'm in no hurry. I've written nothing that I'll keep. I'm just thinking about all of this, sure of this one thing: the center of this idea holds and I want to write the heck out of it for Tamra. I have time before the idea becomes a project becomes a deadline. I have time, but I also have (incredible, necessary) a new and urgent passion.
When I write Berlin for Tamra Tuller at Philomel—when I steal the time, when I shake the hours down and claim a few as my own (give me time, give it to me)—I am writing this song. I am dancing to this song. I am my long-ago self, in love with David Bowie and this very particular tune.
Today in the foggy dark I wrote a snatch of a scene.
I cannot tell you how much more alive I feel when I write.
Sometimes the days get too busy, the demands too shrieking, the hours too full, and I forget:
Small Damages is due out in July.
Today I was waiting (very early) for a client to call and he did not. I hurried and worried about it, sat at my desk with my mind fisty and tight, and then my thoughts went to another place, to the books that ease me back to a peaceful place, to this story.
I remembered this scene from
Small Damages:
The first night after my father died, the wind startedhowling and wouldn’t stop. It banged the trash cans out into the street andU-turned the limbs of the trees and scorched the canopy straight off the sideporch, and this was before my mother had found her talent for exerting herpower over things. So that she stood at one end of the house, and I stood atthe other until it was my father I heard in the wind, speaking to me and meonly. He howled and howled until he’d blown a tunnel through my heart, a black,blank wilderness that rattles.
It was September of my senior year, and I had loved myfather best.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 4/1/2012
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On our way to
"Memphis" yesterday we stopped in the Fashion District, rode the crowded elevator to the second floor of
Mood, and shopped where the Project Runway stars shop—got lost among countless bolts of fabric (does anyone actually know how many bolts of fabric lie supine at Mood?). Oh, this was a great thing to do. Yes, I did come home with Mood feathers and a T-shirt. Next we went to Parsons and stood inside its skinny lobby. All so that I could say (to any who would listen; will you listen?): I stood among the vapors of
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Austin.
"Memphis" was just what I needed yesterday—third-row orchestra seats, center, thanks to my brother. I loved the storyline of this show, surged ecstatic about the stage sets, felt the hammering heart of the big dance numbers, totally dug that gospel choir. I loved the two big guys who danced like there are no dance rules and who sang with such peppy abandon.
Just before the show began, I received a note from my agent, Amy Rennert (who always remembers), and another from Tamra Tuller, that dear soul, who was writing to say that my
Small Damages jacket—a sample from the first run—would be waiting for me at home when I returned. It's gorgeous! It's
debossed!! It, in some unpossess-able way, belongs to me. And at this dark hour, dawn, I am still trying to figure out how to take a photograph of it so that you can
see what the fabulous Michael Green calls its "special touches." Philomel made an investment in this jacket. It shows. "You need to frame that one," my husband, the artist of inscrutable high standards, said.
On the bus home from NYC, our son called. He's an extremely happy kid. No, not a kid. He's a young man with the right friends and a bright future and such a knack for analysis and writing that he earned an A plus on a big paper this week. "What did the professor say?" I asked. Quietly, then, never boastful, my son answered.
"Well," he said. "He actually called it awesome."
"
Awesome," I repeated. "
Wow. Was there more?" I have to ask; my kid is immune to bragging and strut.
The Small Damages jacket reveal and a big thank you to all of you ... all offered up in less than two minutes.
Check out the Mood T-shirt.
smoking!
I hurry us deep into the belly ofthe church, away from the wind that tumbles in behind, toward Herr Palinski,who is still playing Bach like a four-armed man, like Berlin—both sides—islistening. Slowly Meryem eases in, lets me sit with her in a lonesome pew. She tilts her head and looks up, as ifthe music is coming from high in the church’s hollows, or from the tenacious stain of windows. Herducky yellow boots flop sideways. Her back scoops my ribs.
— from the Berlin novel, for Tamra Tuller/Philomel
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The ocean is behind me as I type; the day has come in. I have been up since an early hour, at work again on Berlin. I arrived here anxious, late Tuesday night: Could I find my way to the end of this complex novel? Could I honor Tamra Tuller, who invited me to write this book for her—her faith a gift like none other? Many themes would have to find their way home. Two storytelling voices would have to hold their own. Tensions couldn't lag. Research (oh, so much uncountable research) could never be confused with plot. And don't forget love, which lies at this story's heart. Don't forget what it is to love, and to wait. Don't crowd that small big thing out with all that is Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, Little Istanbul and Stasi paranoia, bratwurst vendors and David Bowie.
Writing here has meant rewriting here, taking things apart. It has required long walks and a settling in above the old laptop at 3 AM or 4 each day; I was here, after all, to write. I had better make use of the days. Clients await me. The final projects of my beloved Penn students. Reviews. A contest or two to judge. A son's graduation. Interviews.
Small Damages. If I couldn't do it here, I wouldn't do it at all. I felt the pressure immensely.
This morning, at this hour, the book isn't done. It is, however, intimately understood and my anxiety is gone. There will be a storm here later today; in the gray dawn outside the waves are churning. I will always be grateful to Beach Haven for letting me breathe, for restoring my own faith in me. And I will always be grateful to my husband, too, who gave me room to work, who heard me, weeks and weeks ago, when I said, "I'd give anything for just a few, spare writing days."
I returned from Penn—boarded the late train home—and walked beneath a clouding sky. It had been a long day, rich, spent in the company of students, and though I ached in my heart and my head (last week is our last class; how hard it will be to say goodbye), I hurried toward the package that I knew was waiting for me.
Isn't it beautiful, the exquisite Tamra Tuller had written in her note.
Yes, Tamra. Because of you and Philomel, it is.
Small Damages, then, which was so kindly
reviewed last week by the one and only Amy Riley,
who has a knack for sensing turning points and celebrating them.
I don't need to say much more than this: the Berlin novel is complete. There will, of course, be more things to do, as the story settles. There is always more to do with books. But the biggest part, the by-far hardest part, is done, as I say in this brief video. It has been a blessed and emotional journey.
Happy birthday week, dear Tamra Tuller. This one's for you.
The beautiful, wise, wonderful, and ever-dear Tamra Tuller just called with the news. SMALL DAMAGES has received a star from Publishers Weekly.
When you have a house this fantastic behind you, when you have a Tamra Tuller in your corner, you desperately don't want to let anyone down.
I am breathing easier. Thank you, Publishers Weekly.
Small DamagesBeth Kephart. Philomel, $17.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-25748-3
As Kenzie’s senior year of high school begins, her beloved father dies suddenly. Her mother’s coping mechanisms—pack his things, start a business, join Match .com—push Kenzie closer to her friend Kevin, and by spring, she’s pregnant. Kenzie’s mother’s response (which feels more 1896 than 1996, when the story is set) is to arrange for Kenzie to move to a bull farm in southern Spain, where she’ll work until the baby is born and given up for adoption. The wrinkle in this soulless plan is that Kenzie is conflicted; her story is written as a tender, honest letter to her unborn child. Kenzie arrives in Spain sullen and resentful—she’s chopping onions with Estela, the farm’s cook, while her friends are at the Jersey Shore—and the distance brings her predicament into sharp relief. Estela is a better mother than her biological one; Esteban, the teen in charge of horses, a more standup guy than Yale-bound Kevin. This beautifully written “summer of transformation” story will have readers feeling as torn about Kenzie’s choice as she is. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amy Rennert, the Amy Rennert Agency. (July)
As much research as I do for all of my books, I try to steer clear of any art (pure art, pure story) that might influence my storytelling until my own book is settled into place. With my Berlin novel now in the compassionate hands of Tamra Tuller at Philomel, I feel less constrained, more able to watch or read work set in the same zones of time and place. Last night, at my friend Annika's urging, I watched "The Lives of Others," a film that had been on my radar screen for quite some time.
The film is, as Annika had promised, compelling and necessary—an intense, provocative, ultimately beautiful look at the compressed lives of artists in Stasi-dominated East Berlin, beginning in 1984. Heroes and anti-heroes abound. The loveliness of the film, the heartbreaking part, is how rarely the characters conform to stereotype.
By: Kathy Temean,
on 5/23/2012
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Before I leave as Regional Advisor, we will have one or maybe two Networking Dinners in NYC with editors and agents. Space is limited, so if you want to attend, you will need to e-mail me to let me know you want a spot. Please put “Networking Dinner Spot” in the subject area and I will get back to you.
Date: June 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm Networking, dinner, dessert
Cost: $145 per person. Includes dinner and drink.
Place: Private Room Morton’s Steakhouse 551 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10017
3 to 1 ratio of attendees to Editors/Agents/AD
OUR GUESTS FOR THE EVENING:
Ginger Clark, Literary Agent with Curtis Brown LTD
Daniel Nayeri, Editor at Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Lucy Cummins, Associate Art Director with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Connie Hsu, Sr. Editor at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Melissa Sarver, Agent at Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency
Kate Sullivan, Associate Editor, Little, Brown, and Co. BFYR
Tamra Tuller, Sr. Editor at Philomel Books
Allison Wortche, Associate Editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers
Tamson Weston, Editorial Consultant, Published Children’s Book Author, and Editor with over 15 years of experience at several prestigious publishing houses including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Disney Hyperion.
The posted illustration was submitted by Mary Zisk for May. Mary is a mild-mannered magazine art director by day, and an author/illustrator on weekends. She wrote and illustrated “The Best Single Mom in the World: How I Was Adopted,” published by Albert Whitman in 2001. She has a picture book dummy,”Oliver’s Week,” that is under consideration. By attending NJSCBWI events, Mary is learning to write her middle grade novel, “The Art of Being Remmy,” which takes place in 1964. And she’s a Jersey girl. www.maryzisk.com
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0 Comments on Networking Dinners & Update as of 1/1/1900
This is all made of awesome.
So exciting!!!!
So glorious. congrats. cannot wait to read it
yay!