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As we head towards another General Election in 2015, once again politicians from the Right and Left will battle it out, hoping to persuade the electorate that either a big state or small state will best address the challenges facing our society. For 40 years, Germans living behind the Iron Curtain in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had first-hand experience of a big state, with near-full employment and heavily subsidized rent and basic necessities. Then, when the Berlin Wall fell, and East Germany was effectively taken over by West Germany in the reunification process, they were plunged into a new capitalist reality. The whole fabric of daily life changed, from the way people voted, to the brand of butter they bought, to the newspapers that they read. Circumstances forced East Germans to swap Communism for Capitalism, and their feelings about this change remain quite diverse.
Initially, East Germans flooded across the border, bursting with excitement and curiosity to see what the West was like – a ‘West’ that most had only known through watching Western television. For some, sampling a McDonald’s hamburger – the ultimate symbol of Western capitalism – was high on the to-do list, for others it was access to Levi’s jeans or exotic fruit that was particularly novel.
Going over the Berlin Wall, November, 1989, by gavinandrewstewart. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.
At the same time as delighting in consumer improvements however, many East Germans felt ambivalent about the wider changes. Decades of state propaganda that painted Western societies as unjust places where homelessness, drugs and unemployment were rife, had left its mark, and many East Germans felt unsure and slightly fearful of what was to come.
From a position of full employment in 1989, 3 years after reunification 15% of East Germans were out of work. For those who struggled to put bread on the table after reunification, the advantages of having a wider range of goods to buy remained a largely theoretical gain. For others however, reunification led to greater freedom to pursue individual career choices that were not dictated by the state’s needs.
The end of East Germany’s ‘big state’ model led to the disbanding of its Secret Police, the Stasi, which had rooted out opposition to the State’s dictates. In the 1980s, 91, 000 people worked for the Stasi full time and a further 173, 000 acted as informers. To enforce socialism, they tapped people’s phones, wired their houses, trailed suspects and even collected smell samples in jars, so that sniffer dogs could track their movements.
For those who were made to feel vulnerable and afraid by a regime that watched, trailed and threatened to imprison them, such as political opponents, Christians, environmental activists or other non-conformists, the fall of the Wall and the end of the GDR most often brought relief: the Western set-up allowed for greater freedom of expression and greater freedom of movement.
Juggling on the Berlin Wall, by Yann Forget. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
For the majority of East Germany though, this was not how they felt: since many say they had no idea of the extent to which the Stasi was intertwined with daily life, the end of the GDR did not bring with it a sense of relief. In fact, many East Germans felt that there were many things the West could learn from the GDR, and were resentful at the lack of openness to incorporating any East German policies or practices in the reunification process.
“Everywhere is becoming like a foreign land. I have long wished to travel to foreign parts, but I have always wanted to be able to come home … The landscapes remain the same, the towns and villages have the same names, but everything here is becoming increasingly unfamiliar.”
This view was echoed my many East Germans, who were conscious that they, for example, dressed differently from their Western compatriots, didn’t know how to pronounce items on the McDonalds menu when they were ordering and didn’t know how to work coin-operated supermarket trolleys in the West. With the fall of the Wall, a whole way of life evaporated. The certainties on which day to day routines had been built ceased to exist.
Swapping Communism for Capitalism has prompted diverse reactions from East Germans. Few would wish to return to the GDR, even if it were possible. However while many delight in having greater individual choice about what they eat, where they go, what they do and what they say, they often also have a wistful nostalgia for life before reunification, where the disparity between rich and poor was smaller and the solidarity between citizens seemed to be greater.
and in some ways, one photograph captures it all. With huge thanks to the Chronicle team, to my friend Ruta Sepetys (whose Going Over quote is here, on the back of One Thing Stolen), and to Patricia Hruby Powell, who so beautifully reviewed Going Over for The News-Gazette; her review can be found here.
0 Comments on One Thing Stolen arrives; Going Over is kindly reviewed as of 1/1/1900
A few weeks ago, the beautiful (inside and out) Caroline Starr Rose asked me to reflect on the writing of historical fiction. What typically comes first, she wanted to know—character, era, or story idea? How do I do my research? Why do I love research? And why is historical fiction important?
I answered that final question like this:
Why is historical fiction important? I think it is so important to try to imagine ourselves into the lives of others during critical junctures in world history. It is a hugely empathetic act. And empathy is, finally, what storytelling is all about—empathy for others, and empathy for ourselves.
You can find our entire conversation on Caroline's blog, here.
Always a privilege to be in the company of this talented, award-winning writer.
0 Comments on how do we make historical fiction feel like right now? as of 5/14/2014 2:06:00 PM
How to get rid of the embarrassing yellow-flower weed in my front lawn. How to stop breaking my fingernails just when they've reached their prettiest. How to make my new-fangled pottery vases stand up straight. How to remain focused on what actually matters in life, even as I stare down petty worries and ricocheting fears of the unjust.
Etc.
I also didn't know a thing about Wattpad—a free community in which readers can chat with writers—until my friends Sally Kim and Ali Presley of Chronicle Books whispered the news in my ear. There are all kinds of authors here, all kinds of books, all kinds of reading opportunities. And, like I said, it's free.
I am now, officially, a Wattpad-er, and here is my I don't even have a single follower yet Wattpad page. I'll be posting chapters of GOING OVER here over the next several weeks and interacting with any reader who sends a note or asks a question.
Take a look.
But also, while I have your attention, here is something wild: While exploring Wattpad on my own yesterday, I discovered this—a Wattpad story called Unrequited Love whose second chapter begins with words that this writer named Beth Kephart wrote.
To those who followed the blog tour for Going Over, thank you. To those who lent their time and space to the journey, enormous thanks. To Lara Starr, who set this whole thing up before I even knew there would be a blog tour, you rock, girl.
For the questions that were asked, the reviews that were written, the photos that were shared, the generosity of Chronicle Books—for all of it, I will always be grateful
For any of you who missed the links—and the giveaways—they're all here, below. In many cases, there is still time to win both a signed book and an Audible copy.
The Jewish Museum, designed by Daniel Libeskind, in Berlin
First, I need to say thank you to everyone who made my birthday such a bright yesterday. My birthday-birthday, and my book birthday. The weather was surreal-ly sweet. The daffodils bloomed. I got the client project done in the nick of time. My students were their perfect student selves. My husband brought roses. A friend drove a long way to leave me with a glamorous basket of pansies. My brother played the birthday song, my brother-in-law was all sweetness, my mother-in-law sang. There were hummingbirds and William Kotzwinkle and Kelly Simmons just about did me in with words I swear I'm gonna frame.
I had crab cake.
I had dessert.
My son called—his voice the color of the day, his stories the kind that kept me smiling, late, in the dark of the night.
I know what, and for whom, to be grateful. And I am.
Today, I am, again, grateful for Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books and the release of Going Over, and for all of you who sent notes or Twittered or Facebooked or just plain kept me company during the release. Thank you for letting me know about the starred review in Shelf Awareness. Thank you for sending along the extremely kind BookPage review.
Last evening, Chronicle Books kicked off the blog tour (following Serena Agusto-Cox's earlier blog kindness) with some words I wrote about music, writing, and Berlin, in a post that begins like this, below, and carries forward here: -->
At the age of nine, on a Boston pond, I launched my (oh so very minor) ice-skating career. Twirls. Edges. Leaps. Falls.
Shortly thereafter (the precise day and hour escape me now), I began to write. Lyric flourishes. Running lines. Suspended disbelief. Revisions.
Music and story. They’re the same thing, right? Sentences are melodies. Plots are choreography. The silence in between the lines is wish and wisk.
Today My Friend Amy, who has, for almost forever, truly been My Friend Amy, is continuing that blog tour. A book warrior with wings, I'll call her, who has accompanied me through so much of my writing journey, who has always mattered deeply, who spent some time reading Going Over, writes the sweetest words, and is offering a copy of the book to one of her readers, all of which is happening here.
0 Comments on lots of thanks, and My Friend Amy (warrior with wings) as of 4/2/2014 8:15:00 AM
What glorious work Inquirer page designer Amy Junod does. I'm always so lucky when my stories arrive on her desk. Grateful today to be able to sing about the Wayne Art Center and the friendships I have made among people who actually know what they are doing with clay (and apparently do not mind that I don't).
This is also my first piece with a Going Overbyline. The time is soon for my Berlin.
As always, a huge thanks to editor Kevin Ferris, with whom I have such fun working.
0 Comments on celebrating the pottery ladies (and the honorary pottery ladies) (and the Wayne Art Center) in this weekend's Inquirer as of 3/22/2014 10:01:00 AM
In Berlin the week before last, my friend Jessa mentioned that people on public transit there are completely okay with staring. It’s not just fine to stare, she said; it’s expected. If you don’t look at people, you’re the weird one.
For me, longtime rider of the New York City subway that I am, this idea was hard to wrap the mind around. Even making eye contact more than once on the train here is practically an aggressive act.
On the U-Bahn with her the next day, I remembered what she said, but couldn’t bring myself to look around at fellow passengers long enough to confirm it. It felt too intrusive. I kept glancing away.
“Oh, but they were staring at you,” she told me, when I mentioned this later.
“So what do people think when a New Yorker stares at the floor?” I asked her. “Are they just like, oh, she’s not from here?”
“No.” She smiled the excellent smile she breaks into when appreciating the unintentionally ironic. “They think you’re evasive,” she said, and recommended sunglasses.
I followed her advice. Max snapped this shot of my sort-of-but-not-really brother Jordan and me riding the U-Bahn to Karl-Marx-Allee (nee Stalinallee). As Anna Wiener said when she recommended we walk along it, “the changes in architecture so starkly reflect the political shifts in Berlin’s history, and it’s wild to imagine people moving into this showpiece promenade.”
The fog is lifting here, the rain subsiding, and in two hours I'll meet my friend Annika at Chanticleer, where we will walk a path familiar to us both. We have both taken solace and shelter in this pleasure garden. We are both lovers of dance. And I have a written a book about Annika's home, Germany, which she has generously agreed to read.
And so Berlin, gardens, dance, stories. All of it here, in two hours.
From the novel (first draft) that I will be sharing:
Some time, late, I wake to the sound of Omi snoring behind the door to her room.She takes a long, rasping time filling her lungs, then snorts the air out quick, and then it’s silence, then rumbling again.Who knows how she sleeps.People who hide don’t want to be found, she said, and now when I close my eyes it’s her world, the stories she’s told me.The Red Army has made its way in, is crossing the river.There are German traitors—deserters—strung up by their flimsy necks from the lampposts at train stations, and women and children are almost all that is left of Berlin.There will be no virgins standing after everything is done, and the newspapers have stopped, and the phones ring empty, and the trains run two-to-three to a car while everybody else walks, because no one else, including Omi, can afford the fare; they have all been issued the wrong ration cards.She will wait in many lines.She will fight for rancid butter.She will loot the abandoned bakery for whatever there still is, and at night she will warm her feet by that brick, her legs cold and white beside her mother’s.When the bombs go off she will scramble, her heart high and sick in her throat.She will run, buckets of stolen things in either hand, the buckets clanging.She will run beneath the streets into the shelter.
2 Comments on Chanticleer, Berlin, and a Special Friend, last added: 5/6/2012
Of the twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, the letter “Q” seems to be to be the quirkiest as it masquerades as a “K” sound, squiggly tail and all. To gain a better understanding and appreciation of all things “Q” related, Berlin based illustrator Katja Spitzer and writer Sebastian Gievert have teamed up to create Quodlibet - a carefully curated illustrated encyclopedia of Q-words inspired by French novelist Georges Perec, who made a book centered around letter “E”.
Quodlibet is not your everyday encyclopedia. In fact, it’s quite the opposite as it primarily features colorful and often comical illustrations of queens, quacks, Quentin Tarantino, and other quandaries. Without any question, do yourself a favor and grab a copy from No Brow.
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."
4 Comments on thoughts on leaving Beach Haven, and on the making of a book, last added: 4/16/2012
That's wonderful that you were able to take some time to write, and in such a beautiful place too. That husband of yours is a keeper, as my mema would say. :)
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
2 Comments on Bach and Berlin, a sliver from a work in progress, last added: 4/10/2012
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.
6 Comments on Writing to David Bowie, last added: 3/20/2012
I love this song! I'm trying to picture a young Beth rocking out to it. I guess it's easier to picture a now-Beth jamming in the dark with it. So. Awesome. :)
I adore this song...and have a weakness for the singer during this particular phase of his career as well. I knew there was (yet another!) reason I liked you.
In the summer of 2010, I was at the American Library Association meeting in Washington, DC, when the ever-fashionable Jill Santopolo (who had worked with me on several Laura Geringer/Harper Collins books and had herself edited The Heart Is Not a Size) slipped a copy of Ruta Sepetys's novel to me and said, "I read this on the train and cried. I think it's the kind of book you'd love."
I did. So did the world.
Reading Between Shades of Gray made me wonder about the editor of that book, Jill's Philomel colleague Tamra Tuller, who had taken on Ruta's literary exploration of another time, another place. I had been working on a Seville novel for years at that point. I had come close—very close—to selling it more than one time. My heart had been broken, but I hadn't given up; if I believed in anything I believed in that cortijo, that cook, those gypsies, those Spanish songs. I wrote a note to Tamra—brazen slush pile person that I have often been—and asked if she might take a look.
She did. The rest is history. Two years to the month after my first reaching out to Tamra, Small Damages—far the better book for the conversations Tamra and I had—will be released, on my son's birthday, to be exact. A year or so from now (the timing isn't fixed) my Berlin novel, a book born out of a phone conversation Tamra and I had one afternoon, a book that reflects both our love for that city (Tamra having gone there first, Tamra having sent me thoughts about where I might go, what I might see), will find its way into the world.
And today, for the first time, I meet Tamra, a young woman who has changed my writing life immeasurably in ways both big and small. Two trains, a long walk, a conversation—in person. If I'm lucky, Jill herself will be in sight (and the very dear Jessica).
It feels like going home.
3 Comments on Seville, Berlin, Philomel: At long last, I am meeting Tamra Tuller, last added: 3/14/2012
After a day of thick, gray rain, I imagine spring being near. I imagine myself at Chanticleer garden, in the opening hours. Maybe my friend Annika will be there.
In the meantime, I will be grateful for the day that was. For the enormous kindness of a certain editor who (even in the midst of her great personal busy-ness) stops to write and to give me hope for my Berlin book. For the time I had to return to a memoir-long-in-the-making. For a client who stops to thank me for project work completed thus far. For studently goodness. For a text from my son. "Wrote 11 stories for the TV station today," he said. "You're really good at that," I told him.
I'm taking the earliest train to Philadelphia tomorrow, so that I can take a still-early train to New York. I'll spend much of the day on Wall Street then, but I'll be back in time for dance.
3 Comments on now (an instant), last added: 3/1/2012
Oh Beth! New York?! Sounds like you'll be rushing to and from, hanging downtown with the 1%. I'll be sighing in Chelsea sitting in my cubicle, wishing there was a way to meet in the middle... :)
Yesterday, after sending the first 175 pages of my Berlin novel off to Tamra Tuller, whose dearness cannot be quantified, I sat and read those 35,000 words through again. I'd spent the day reading and editing and trimming, of course, and the day before that day doing the same, but there's something about sending your work to another that enables you to read the work newly—to read as a reader and not as a writer. There is, of course, a difference.
My Berlin novel is a complex book. The history it contains and reflects is complicated and important. Kreuzberg is a crazy mix of punkers, immigrants, rebels. Friedrichshain is riddled with spies and deprivation. The characters have to be (for me) a new breed of people. There have to be sub-plots and entanglements. Still, as I read I asked myself questions: Too complex? Too entangled? Should I bring the language down a notch?
At one point, my husband near, I pondered out loud.
He listened, briefly, then decided. "People like simple stories," he said. "You should write The Godfather."
1 Comments on you should write The Godfather, last added: 2/24/2012
The only cure, for writers, is writing on. You will hear what you don't want to hear. You will ponder it in your heart. You will call a friend (no, be honest, the friend called you), and she will listen, and then you will carry on. You know what you can do, and you will do it.
Yesterday, while contemplating the fate of a book I have been writing for a very long time, I returned to Berlin, a story that challenges me deeply and, at the same time, brings me great joy. It's the story I'm supposed to be writing right now, for many, many reasons. It's a book I daily thank Tamra Tuller for. Yesterday I reached the halfway mark. It is with this scene that the story turns:
“Whatare you going to do?” Mutti asks.
“Aboutwhat?” “Iknow you, Ada. You’re scheming.”
Thereare hard lines beneath my mother’s eyes and shadows caught between them. Her hair is thistles. The light from the window glows throughit, then storms her face with a sea-colored green. Sometimes when I look at my mother’s face I see every manshe ever loved and how much loving bruised her.
“Ithink it’s pretty obvious.”
“Whatis?”
“Thatthere’s nothing I can do.”
“Nothing?”
“It’simpossible, Mutti. You know how itis. The Turks are their owncountry. I can’t save Savas.”
Shestraightens suddenly then shivers with the cold, unsatisfied. She pulls her thin sweater across herchest and buttons it up to her chin, knows that I’m lying, because if I knewhow to rescue Savas I would. If Iknew where to find him, that’s where I’d be. The truth doesn’t sit well withMutti.
Shestares at me for a long time. Draws her index finger across the bridge of mynose. “Impossible has neverstopped you,” s
4 Comments on writing on and through; a scene from Berlin, last added: 2/4/2012
I found him in Berlin. I watched him work—fearless before every single blank page. A quick idea, a suggestion—a tightrope walker, say—and the color was rolled and sliced, the painting set to dry. It was that easy.
Today the fog lifts slowly. I'll grab the train, walk 30th to 40th, meet with a student, then set off for my class. Three new young writers will be joining us this week. We'll talk diaries, Joan Didion, Chad the Minx, Dawn Powell, Judith Malina, Joyce Carol Oates. We'll wade through definitions. We'll preface Geoffrey Wolff.
And then we'll take our cameras, and we'll walk.
3 Comments on street artist: approaching the blank page, last added: 1/25/2012
David Bowman has an interesting and timely back-page essay in The New York Times Book Review this weekend. It's called "Read It Again, Sam," and it celebrates books fine enough to be read again. Patti Smith reports on her plan to read again An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter. Stephen King professes to having read Lord of the Flies eight or nine times. Bharati Mukherjee reveals that she re-read all of Louise May Alcott at least a half-dozen times at the tender age of 9.
And you?
Earlier this week, while on a plane home from London, I reached for Book of Clouds (Chloe Aridjis), a book I'd read at once upon its release in 2009. It's just the right size for an eight-hour flight (with a nap tucked somewhere in between), and I'd wanted to re-read it because I craved the surreal mood it had engendered within me—the fog, the mist, the strange; I craved the Berlin at the book's heart. How had Aridjis achieved her effects? I would examine this. I would study it.
I had remembered Clouds as a lyric of a book, and indeed extraordinarily beautiful images float throughout. But what was also fascinating to me, upon my second review, is that Aridjis is not tricking her reader with language here; she is never overreaching. Indeed, some of her oddest moments and most surreal, memorable constructions are rendered with thoroughly uncluttered, even straightforward prose—a glorious effect that I had not deconstructed my first time through. So caught up was I in the mood of her Berlin—in the underground worlds, in the residues of a sinister past—that I failed to see that passages like this one, describing an abandoned bowling alley beneath the streets, had been meticulously and not (until the very end) metaphorically put forth. Aridjis gives us the facts. She lets us do with them what we will.
After traversing several dark, damp rooms, plowing ever deeper into the labyrinth, though it was hard to tell how many doorways we'd actually crossed, we arrived at the so-called Gestapo bowling alley, a rectangular room, somewhat larger than the others as far as I could tell. Our guide asked us to fan out so that everyone could see and directed his flashlight at different spots. I stepped out from behind a girl with pigtails and began to look around. It was a pretty chilling sight. Everything, it seemed, was just the way it had been left decades ago. At the center of the room lay a metal contraption, about eight feet long, an obsolete machine once used for spitting out wooden bowling balls, and with its rusty corners and thin bars, it looked, at least from afar, like a medieval instrument of torture, like those racks to which victims were bound by their hands and feet and then stretched.
I would not have known this about Clouds had I not read the book a second time. I would have carried with me a false idea about Aridjis method—a first-blush idea, not a studied one. I loved the book even more the second time I read it through. I loved it, though, for somewhat different reasons.
I've so been looking forward to re-reading Lucy Maude Montgomery's selected Journals (five in all). There books I imagine I'll return to for a lifetime.
I rarely re-read (say that five times) . . . but one book I read almost every year is The Great Gatsby. It's a reminder of how a certain person can write in a narrow space and own it.
to answer your question. I've reread a number of books, Wuthering Heights and Pride & Prejudice many times, but I love reading Shakespearean plays too. I'm an odd duck.
Re-reading Larry Woiwode's Beyond the Bedroom Wall has been a wish of mine for many years. I finally found a like-new hardback copy in a charming roadside bookshop in Vermont earlier this year (no one was minding the store but the door was open; I just left the money and then some on the check-out desk with a note). But have yet to get to the re-reading. Thanks for reminding me.
I have re-read The World According to Garp many times and continue to marvel at John Irving's complex and compelling storytelling his use of language--and humor. I re-read many writing books, most especially Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. I also periodically re-read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gifts from the Sea.. And T.S. Eliot's poetry. All of these renew me and I always find new insights and resonance. I also frequently revisit favorite children's books, including picture books.
As an adult I re-read a book I adored as a pre-teen, Mrs.Mike by Nancy & Benedict Freedman. I was shocked to think the writing bad and how could I not have noticed that when I was young? Perhaps I didn't know know about good writing then, and was just swept away by the story and learning about things I had no idea about at the time. Or--perhaps as I in a bad place as an adult, and my assessment was incorrect. So--I plan to re-read that one again someday. And probably write about it, if doing so gives me something to say. I loved Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights around the same age and they certainly hold up.
I know I have more answers. To Dance with the White Dog by Terry Kay and The Diving Bell & the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby: both short so don't take long to revisit. And oh my yes one of my all-time favortite books, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy.
It is with tremendous happiness—and a sense of terrific good fortune— that I share the news that I will again be working with Philomel on two new books, a deal that was announced earlier today in both Publishers Weekly and Publishers Lunch. My experience throughout the editing and pre-launch of Small Damages (due out July 19, 2012) has been unparalleled. My respect for Tamra Tuller (my editor), Michael Green (Philomel president), and indeed the entire Philomel team—and author list—cannot be quantified. My appreciation for their kindness and care, their intelligence and wisdom, and their faith in me is unspeakable.
It is a remarkable thing to be believed in by people this smart and this good.
Here is the deal as Publishers Lunch noted it earlier today. My thanks to my agent Amy Rennert for helping to make this happen, and for being there through all the years.
National Book Award finalist and author of more than a dozen books including the new YOU ARE MY ONLY and the forthcoming SMALL DAMAGES, Beth Kephart's two untitled novels, the first of which introduces a teenage graffiti artist living in Berlin in the early 1980s on the eve of a daring escape, to Tamra Tuller at Philomel, by Amy Rennert at the Amy Rennert Agency (World).
24 Comments on the two-book deal with Philomel, last added: 12/6/2011
Yay! Congratulations all around! This is the best news ever and so well deserved. You are amazing! Philomel is lucky to have you and it sounds like they know that. Yay! :o)
Universal Studios has acquired the movie rights for In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oscar winner Tom Hanks and his producing partner Gary Goetzman may produce the project. Hanks could star in the movie as well.
Here’s more from the article: “The book tells the true tale of William Dodd, the United States’ reluctant and mild-mannered ambassador to Berlin in 1933, and his daughter Martha, a vivacious socialite who had romantic affairs with a Gestapo official and a Soviet spy.”
What a hip, creative vibe Berlin has. Like a really smooth espresso—cranks you up but doesn’t make you jumpy.
I was there in July and wished I could bottle the buzz and take it with me. It made me want to write, paint, photograph, disco!
Twenty years after the reunion of East and West Germany, Berlin is still re-inventing itself. It’s bustling with construction: here’s a photo taken from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), with a view of all the cranes going outside it:
One of my favorite spots this visit was the dome of the Reichstag, the home of the German parliament (the first shot above is looking up through the open dome).
The original dome, which was destroyed during World War II, was also glass and steel (see below), but the current one (below the original) looks like something from The Phantom Menace.
Look inside the dome in the next photo. It’s actually open to the elements, so snow and rain enter the center column (the part that looks like a mirrored tornado) and get recycled.
The glass dome is meant to be symbolic of transparency in the present-day German government. But it also struck me as such a symbol of the city and of modern Germany itself. The über-eco space-age cupola joined with the damaged historic building feels like what Berlin is all about.
The New York Times had a debate recently about where young Hemingway would go to live in 2011. Paris again? London? Two debaters (of five or so) voted for Berlin, and I’d cast my vote for Berlin, too. It’s a magnet for creatives these days in part because it’s much more affordable than other big cities.
Holly Becker of decor8 recently wrote a post about creatives living in Berlin. She highlights a German website, Freunde von Freunden that gives sneak peeks into artists’ homes.
For some fascinating photography of historic Berlin (and other European) sites, check out this post by annekata post here. She highlights the work of two photographers who specialize in merging war-time and modern photographs. The effect is mind-blowing.
(Sadly, annekata is no longer blogging, but she’s left up her posts, whi
2 Comments on That Berlin Buzz, last added: 8/25/2011
THE BERLIN BOXING CLUB, by award-winning author Robert Sharenow (My Mother the Cheerleader), has been given THREE STARRED REVIEWS! Here is what everyone is raving about:
“Sharenow delivers a masterful historical novel that examines racism through the eyes of both children and real historical figures.” ~ Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A story with well-drawn, complex characters, gripping history, and intense emotion.” ~ School Library Journal (starred review)
“Readers will be drawn by the sports detail and by the close-up narrative of the daily oppression.” ~ Kirkus (starred review)
Robert Sharenow’s editor, the fabulous Kristin Rens, recently shared with us what it is about the story and Robert’s writing that drew her to the story when she first read it:
It’s hard to talk about just one thing that struck me about BERLIN BOXING CLUB, because when I read the first draft I was struck by something new on almost every page: there’s Rob’s writing, which is eloquent and moving; there’s the way he beautifully marries the political and social upheaval happening around Karl with the life-altering events that take place in his own family; and there’s Karl’s quest to find his own unique talents through boxing and art—a quest to which any teen can relate. Most of all, though, I was struck by the fact that Rob was writing about this place and time from a point of view that I hadn’t seen before: that of a teen boy whose heritage is Jewish, but because his parents haven’t raised him in the Jewish faith, he doesn’t consider himself Jewish. In fact, at the beginning of the story he identifies more with boys in the Hitler Youth than he does with his Jewish classmates. And his struggle to understand why he’s being bullied for a faith that he doesn’t really embrace as his own is absolutely heartrending.
Pick up THE BERLIN BOXING CLUB to see what the buzz is all about! And check out the following links for more info:
We came to Berlin to discover the places in between.The fresh scrawl of sprayed paint.The sudden lark of a solemn boy.The brume that settles just ahead of storm.
Between buildings resurrected, among sculptures re-adhered, beneath the dome that bowls up and through an effervescent sky, Berlin is defiantly alive.It is point and color counterpoint, love in the park, a neon thatch of hair, a colossal strike against despair.
Where am I?The question.
The answer:We were there.
2 Comments on Berlin: A Prose Poem, last added: 7/15/2011
Beautiful. I have such interesting memories of Berlin ... I was there in 1992, quite a while ago, a remember such a stark contrast between East and West ... it was like color versus black & white.
I walked those Berlin streets not in search of beauty (for it was everywhere, breaking through), but in search of a way to intelligently navigate the raw, the refined, and the propulsive.
There in the old Jewish Quarter, not far from the Kunsthaus Tacheles Artist Collective, I found Ute Kohnen. I'd seen her shop a few days before—spare and clean—and when I found my way back to it, the door was open and Ute was inside, repairing a necklace for a customer. I was the only customer there, but Ute let me be, let me study each piece in the Galerie Und Werkstatt—the silver worked by a 21 year old; the fabric bracelets (handmade felt, found buttons, painterly details) of the artist Elim Kaah; the delicate glass bead work and gorgeously original necklaces, earrings, and rings that Ute herself designs and makes.
I asked. Ute indulged me—telling stories about the jewelry itself, about the gallery's history, about Ute's life in Berlin, a city she migrated to directly after the fall of the wall. It isn't easy being an artist, and it's especially difficult in a city like Berlin, where an artist's career is affected as much by tourists' moods and capabilities as it is by rain and sheer luck. But Ute, reaching at times for a translation dictionary, told me stories with a grace that I, a perpetually struggling artist myself, received as something close to holy.
We have to see when we travel. But we also have to listen. I am grateful to Ute, therefore, grateful to this gallery on Linienstrasse 141, for the sanctuary and the conversation. I always buy something lasting in a city I've fallen in love with, and at Ute's shop, I indulged in Elim Kaah's artistry and in one special necklace crafted by Ute herself. The link to Ute's work is here. Images of Elim's remarkable felt artistry can be found here.
1 Comments on Ute Kohnen: The Jeweler of Berlin, last added: 6/23/2011
This is so cool. I love her 'armbanders'(the only word I could make out on her website) especially the ones with faces on them. It is interesting that when you ask a stranger a question they often tell great stories. I recently had this happen with my local butcher and a woman who makes pickles in South Carolina.
Universal Studios has acquired the movie rights for In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson.
I always love the pictures of this garden.
That is a powerful passage. Thank you for sharing it.