I walked the new Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk before my river talk last evening. The skies were expressive, pewter and blue, and from this 15-foot-wide float of walkway over the river herself, I saw the city as I had not seen her before. One of the many exhilarating advantages of this new and elevating space.

Another advantage? The joy of it. The Philadelphians who are coming to know, and to better see, their river. The sense that they don't take this for granted, and why should they? It wasn't all that long ago that the Schuylkill was sludge and noxious fumes, dead water, a place to be hurried past. Now, thanks to the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, Fairmount Water Works, Schuylkill River Heritage Area, the William Penn Foundation, the people I have met this week at the 2014 Pennsylvania River of the Year events, and many others, the Schuylkill is the place to be.

I've written here about the Heritage Area. I've written here about Fairmount Water Works. Today, my spotlight is on the SRDC.

Already offering kayaking and river tours, skateboard parks and overlooks, this brand-new boardwalk, and the idea of the bucolic in an urbanscape, the SRDC is hardly done with its quest to build "trails and greenway running along both banks of the Schuylkill River wherever possible between the Fairmount Dam and the Delaware River." Now planned or in play are the Bartram's Mile, destined to run along the west bank between Grays Ferry Avenue and 58th Street (and one-day connecting to the Grays Ferry Crescent by an abandoned railroad bridge); a pedestrian/biking west bank trail; and an east-side trail between the South Street Bridge and Christian.

All I know is words. The SRDC, the organizations mentioned above, the river advocates who work on behalf of tributaries, against run-off, for the future—they are the ones making the physical, even quantifiable difference to our city.

Find a way to thank them the next time you head off toward the river. You wouldn't be there without them.

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Last evening, the sun setting, I sat by the river trail in Pottstown. No paper in hand. No book. No pen. Just sat and watched the sun change the color of the trees, the ducks disturb the water, the cyclists stream by in fluorescent shirts.

Later I walked down the road to Montgomery Community College West and spoke of river history and river dreams with those who know the river best—trail blazers, volunteers, bikers, historians, people with stories to tell about Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, teachers, artists, a minister, a former physician who has brought his exacting eye to river trails and maps.

It takes a village to rescue rivers. What river rescuers we're blessed with.

With thanks to Kurt Zwikl and Laura Catalano of the Schuylkill River Heritage Area, who created the evening. With thanks to everyone who came—such warmth, such very good questions. And looking forward to Thursday evening, when I travel to the city to meet with another cadre of river souls as part of our celebration of the river.

Anyone who loves our river is welcome. Join us.

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We invite you to our celebration of the Schuylkill River, 2014 Pennsylvania River of the Year. This evening I'll be at Montgomery County Community College West Campus, in the Community Room in South Hall at 7 p.m. A second presentation will be held on Thursday Oct. 16 at 7 p.m. at the Trinity Center for Urban Life in Philadelphia. Both events are free.

I'm deeply grateful to the good people at Schuylkill River Heritage Area, Fairmount Water Waters, Schuylkill Banks, and Temple University Press, who have so generously spread the word. My talk, titled "River Dreams: History, Hope, and the Imagination," begins like this:

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Neither oil nor borders. Not religion. Not historical hurts or misremembered sleights. None of these. The next world wars, the experts say, will be fought over water. Over the three percent of the earth’s liquid total that pools in ponds and lakes, careens down channels, overruns crevasses, oozes from retreating glaciers, is barricaded up inside man-made reservoirs, is yanked up from the bottom of the well, is carried, jug to jug and bottle to hand toward cupped palms. Seeds, omnivores, carnivores, herbivores, feathered things—they need it. So do the pink dolphins and the mighty mollusks and the bulge-eyed toads and the little girl with the cascade of curls who has come to the banks with her heart set on adventure.

More can be found here.

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It was a weekend of many friends and many faces. Talking memoir, then book marketing at the annual Push to Publish conference. Performing a "Blurred Lines" cha-cha with my husband at the gorgeous Goodhart Hall on the Bryn Mawr College campus (we're still standing). Setting off for a perfect Sunday with our son, a day that ended with this glimpse of New York City magic.

In the week ahead I'll be at Montgomery County Community College (Tuesday evening) and at Trinity Center for Urban Life (Thursday evening) to give a talk I've titled "RIVER DREAMS: History, Hope and the Imagination," a keynote on behalf of the Schuylkill River's designation as the 2014 Pennsylvania River of the Year. The events are free and open to the public, and we hope you'll consider joining us. More information can be found here.

I also hope to be able to finish reading (and subsequently blogging) Daniel Menaker's My Mistake, a terrific memoir about the life of this former editor. We make mistakes (I've not yet met a perfect person). Some deeply change the course of our lives, or the lives of others. Some are cheek-blushing, oh-damn foibles from which we learn. Menaker's book (I'm halfway through) yields, above all else, perspective. I look forward to sharing more of it here in days to come.

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Pottstown, PA  19464

For Immediate Release

 Author to Speak about Schuylkill River and the Imagination

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A few days ago, I wrote of an upcoming September 4 talk at Radnor Memorial Library, open to the public, about my ghosts (which is to say my two Chanticleer inspired books) and my river (Flow).

Today I'm posting information for two keynote addresses I'll be giving in honor of the Schuylkill River Heritage Area's 2014 River of the Year Lecture series, on October 14 and 16. Details and registration for these free events are here.

I hope you'll join us.

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Today, Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River, a book Temple University Press first released in 2007, arrives as an affordable ($14.95) paperback.

People often ask me what my favorite book is, and I refuse to imagine an answer; each book has, in its own way, spurred me, slayed me, invigorated me, quietly pleased me. I have fought and rooted for each one, and, believe me, I still do.

But Flow is one of those books that I really fought for—this retelling of a river's voice in her own words that I submitted to various presses without a positive response until finally I struck up a conversation with Micah Kleit at Temple University Press. When I called Micah several months after my submission certain that he, too, would pass, he corrected me. "We're not precisely sure what this book is, or how we will categorize it," he said. "But we're definitely going to do it."

And Temple did. Adam Levine, a beloved city archivist, helped me locate images of the river over time. Gary Kramer, Temple publicist, made sure that the book got noticed, and soon, also with the help of Marketing Director Ann-Marie Anderson, I found the book in the pages of most area publications, found myself in standing-room-only readings at the Free Library and the Water Works (among other places), and found myself engaged in an important dialogue about Philadelphia and its past and present.

A conversation I'm still having.

Flow is a book about hope and redemption, a book in which I imagined myself as a river, which is to say a woman caught in perpetual middle age, a woman once spectacular then sullied and abused, a woman finally on the verge of hope as visionaries worked to undo many centuries worth of environmental damage, a woman at long last in love.

Today, all these years later, Flow is the book that (and I am so grateful) many memoirists mention when researching the possibilities of the first-person voice. It is being adopted by middle schools as part of combined literature/environmental science programs (I will, for example, be visiting St. Albans Lower School next spring, on the campus of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, where the book is the required 7th grade read). Thanks to Karen Young, it has become integral to the programming of the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. And thanks to Kurt Zwikl and Laura Catalano of the Schuylkill River Heritage Area, Flow will be part of two keynote talks I give in the fall (at Montgomery County Community College and at Trinity Urban Life Center), as the city celebrates the Schuylkill as the Pennsylvania River of the Year.

Flow begins like this:

Rising

From within the fissure I rise, old as anything.

The gravel beneath me slides. Blueback herring and eel, alewife and shad muscle into my wide blue heart, and through. The smudged face of a wolf pools on my surface, and for that one instant I go blind.......

And when it was first released, some very kind people wrote these words about it:

“Kephart’s Flow is just a sumptuous book—haunting, poetic, lit up with gems of beauty and history.”— Buzz Bissinger

“Flow is seductive, thrilling, irresistible, life-changing. You cannot help but be swept away.” — Sy Montgomery

"Kephart is a master not only of descriptive memory, but of constructing an existential vocabulary. Thus the river is born, becomes aware, is besieged, comes to terms with abuse, half-wishes to be abandoned, and nearly loses hope." —Nathaniel Popkin, City Paper 

“Most autobiographies are a shameful, voyeuristic addiction of the public (thanks Paris, Monica L. and Jenna). But when a river—yes, a free flowing watercourse—releases an autobiography, it goes proudly on your coffee table to advertise your intelligent indie reading. Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River is chock full of memories and moments from the river's lifetime. Okay, so it was penned by Beth Kephart, a regional writer whose résumé overflows with awards. But the powerful words and imaginative musings come directly from the rises of the river, with retellings from poignant events dating back to the colonial era.” — AroundPhilly.com

From the length (I apologize!) of this blog post, I'm sure you can tell: I am beyond delighted that Flow will now be available as an affordable paperback, as soon as it moves out of the warehouse into stores.

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