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Later this morning I'll be talking about the Berlin Wall and Going Over with the students of the Science Leadership Academy, a Franklin Institute-affiliated school that is on a mission to instill the values of learning, creation, and leadership.

It's all part of the innovative 4th Floor Chapbook Series initiative spurred by Philadelphia's daring craft publishing house, The Head and the Hand.

(Don't you love how real people keep thinking?)

More on the 4th Floor Chapbook Series can be found here.

More about the Science Leadership Academy is here.

But also, since I'm talking about cool people and places, I share the photo above, taken yesterday afternoon in Old City, following the glorious final Pennsylvania Ballet performance of my friend, the principal dancer Julie Diana Hench. (More on Julie here.) This is the alley facade of the Center for Art in Wood, and the image was painted and installed by ex-offenders and probationers from the Restorative Justice Guild Program. It's all part of the Mural Arts Program, now well into its 30th transformative year. I recently had the great pleasure of talking with Jane Golden, Mural Arts founder and leader, over lunch, and I'll have more to say about her vision later this summer as I reflect on psychylustro, the new installation now going up along a several-mile stretch between Amtrak's 30th Street and North Philadelphia stations.

Take a look if you are traveling that way. Tell me what you think. I've caught early glimpses already—shocking, electric—and will be watching for those intense colorations again as I ride the rails to the city.

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I have some interesting programs scheduled in the weeks and months ahead.

Among other things, I'll be helping to kick off The Head and The Hand's fabulous 4th Floor Chapbook Series this coming Monday, with a reading from Going Over. On May 24th, I'll help celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Main Line's newest, thriving independent bookstore, Main Point Books, with a Going Over signing.

In September, meanwhile, I'll be joining Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb at the Pennsylvania Library Association Convention, to talk nonfiction and Handling the Truth. Then, in mid-October, I'll be giving two keynote addresses on River Dreams, to celebrate the Schuylkill as the PA River of the Year. In November, I'll head down to Penn to sit on a Young Adult Fiction Panel during Homecoming Weekend.

Finally, next spring, I'll hop a train to Washington, DC, and meet with the students of St. Alban School, a boarding school situated on the campus of the National Cathedral. The 7th and 8th graders will have read Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. Many have already read Dr. Radway's Sarsparilla Resolvent. 

I'm looking forward to it all.

May 12, 2014Science Leadership Academy
GOING OVER reading
in conjunction with The Head and the Hand Press
Philadelphia, PA

May 24, 2014, 3 -4 PM
GOING OVER signing
Main Point Books
Bryn Mawr, PA

September 29, 2014, 2:00 PMNonfiction Panel with Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb
PaLA Convention
Lancaster County Convention Center
Lancaster County, PA

October 14, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Montgomery County Community College West Campus
Community Room

October 16, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Trinity Urban Life Center
Philadelphia, PA

November 1, 2014, 4:00 PM
University of Pennsylvania Homecoming Panel
Young Adult Fiction Panel
Kelly Writers House
Philadelphia, PA

April 10, 2015
Talking about FLOW, the required 7th grade read
St. Albans School
Washington, DC

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My YA writing friends — not only is this an incredibly inventive development (a craft press publishing YA chapbooks for area students)—but this spells opportunity, for you.

The press release from The Head & The Hand Press follows. I'm stoked to be part of the process and program, happy to be traveling to the Science Leadership Academy on May 12 on behalf of this initiative. But I'm equally stoked to share this publishing opportunity (I'm look at you!) here.

We at The Head & The Hand Press <http://www.theheadandthehand.com/> , a craft publisher based in Fishtown, are so excited to collaborate with the students and teachers at the Science Leadership Academy <http://www.scienceleadership.org/>  on our latest project, the 4th Floor Chapbook Series <http://www.theheadandthehand.com/4th-floor-chapbook-series/> . We've been vending chapbooks for the general population to great acclaim <http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-blinq/Philly-coffee-shop-is-vending-verse.html>  in Philly establishments like Elixr coffee house and Honeygrow in a custom-built countertop vending machine, but now it's time to swap out snacks for YA lit and poetry in a new vending machine to be installed at the SLA high school in Center City this fall. To celebrate this partnership, YA author Beth Kephart <http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/p/we-could-be-heroes-berlin-novel.html>  has graciously agreed to do a reading of her recent novel Going Over, a love story set in Berlin before the wall is torn down, at the high school. A bit more about the book and Beth are below. The reading will take place on Monday, May 12 at 11:40 a.m. at the Science Leadership Academy at 55 N. 22nd St.

About Going Over:

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, Going Over is a story of daring and sacrifice, choices and consequences, and love that will not wait.

Click <http://beth-kephart.blogspot.com/p/we-could-be-heroes-berlin-novel.html>  for downloads, trailers, interviews and guest blog posts

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of eighteen books, an adjunct professor of creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania, a frequent contributor to the Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, and the strategic writing partner in a boutique marketing communications firm. Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir won the 2013 Books for a Better Life Award (Motivational Category). Nests. Flight. Sky., Kephart’s first memoir in years, was recently published by Shebooks. Most recently, Beth’s ninth young adult novel, Going Over (Chronicle Books), a 1983 Berlin story and a Junior Library Guild Selection, was launched to three starred reviews.

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