new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Beth Kephart interview, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 6 of 6
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Beth Kephart interview in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 7/24/2012
Blog:
Beth Kephart Books
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Jill Santopolo,
Philomel,
Beth Kephart interview,
Jessica Shoffel,
Caroline Leavitt,
Small Damages,
Tamra Tuller,
Michael Green,
Leavittville,
Add a tag
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.
Sometimes, at the end of a corporate work week, you are missing your students—their vitality, their freshness, their willingness to think beyond, to dare—and you are just a little run down when you get the good news that another college student has posted the interview she conducted with you awhile back.
Dangerous Neighbors had recently been released. Rosella asked me questions no one else ever had.
Rosella Eleanor LaFevre is an aspiring writer and the book critic for Two.One.Five. She and I talked, in her words, about "the inner workings of (my) characters, the meaning behind the title, and the symbolism of birds." The link is
here.
Many of you have been participating in HarperTeen's enormously popular 28 Days of Winter promotion, and tomorrow (February 25) The Heart is Not a Size will be the featured book. Stop by the site to read an exclusive interview in which I talk about best friends, making a difference, romance (hmmmm), and travel. Answer the day's poll, and get a shot at winning a pretty grand prize.
Much of Heart focuses on Georgia's desire to somehow make a difference. Those of you who follow this blog know that the book was largely inspired by the Juarez trip that I took with some spectacular teens and adults. We went to build a community bathroom on the top of a hill and here, in these photographs, you see us at work. I'm the one in the pink and orange (what a color combo!) with a hammer in her hand. I'm the one who didn't want to come home. No. Wait. There were plenty of us who fit that description.
Ruta Rimas, thanks to you today for letting me know that Heart, the official hardback, has now arrived in the HarperTeen offices. I feel another contest coming on.
I am definitely living another's life right now.
I am not me. I am merry-go-round whirling. I am dizzy.
First My Friend Amy and Presenting Lenore cook up this not-to-be-believed virtual (surprise) launch party for Nothing but Ghosts—replete with prizes, with urgings, with viral enthusiasms. Their friends friend the initiative. Momentum builds. Conversations unfold: Can bloggers shape the book industry? Is there power in blogger suggestion? A party becomes a dialogue. A dialogue becomes a story. I watch, stunned—the woman who still thinks of herself as the loner in high school.
Then, today, I wake to discover that my friend, humorist and novelist (yes, she's a novelist; I'm reading her it-will-be-published-soon novel right now) Anna Lefler, has kicked off an extravaganza all her own. I mean: An. Ex.Tra.Va.Gan.Za. Featuring a Beth Kephart tour bus (how does she do those things?), an ocarina, and a bootleg interview conducted (in Anna's trademark so-smart-it-can't-be-slapstick style) with yours truly (when I received her questions I started to laugh; as I answered I kept laughing). Featuring prizes that you have to see to believe ($150 Amazon gift card anyone?).
I know that life isn't always like this. In fact, it rarely is. Nothing but Ghosts is my tenth book. What happens here, what happens now, is not, for an instant, taken for granted. It is a surprise. It is a miracle. It is this moment in time that I will return to, years from now. Remember when?, I'll say.
I've mentioned a podcast recording of a one-hour dialogue I had earlier this week with that gem interviewer, Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. Our topics ranged from the crafting of authenticity in prose to the genesis of my involvement with young adult novels to the making of Nothing but Ghosts and Undercover (I read excerpts of both). We talked about what makes for good books overall. We spoke of how past awards, past seeming successes are, in fact, always in the past, and that every single day of writing feels brand new, raw, and uncertain.
If you can forgive the popped Ps of a long-distance phone conversation (I hope you can and will), I invite you to listen in here.
Yesterday I wrote about the float of a book—how the books I fall into and wish to write generate energy in the seams, in their criss cross and overlays.
Today I am myself floating on air, for Hip Writer Mama, of whom I wrote just a few days ago, has posted her interview with me on her popular blog site, which has been running terrific author interviews all week long as part of the 2008 Winter Blog Blast Tour.
http://hipwritermama.blogspot.com/2008/11/wbbt-through-eyes-of-beth-kephart-and.html
I'm not going to say more here, for I'd love for you to visit her today—Hip Writer Mama, who puts such time into her interviews and such care in the posting (obviously, I don't even know how she does what she does with all those fancy color-coded embeds, or I'd do a little of that myself). Later today (perhaps by 11 AM Philly time?) you will also be able to find me on the MySpaceHarper Teen site, where I'm writing about something that is important to all of us who care about our future: books, and how we vote for them by buying them.
http://www.myspace.com/harperteen
Enough having just been said, I think I'll go hop my train for the city and float some more.
I will have to check this out.
Lovely treat this morning, to read both you and Leavitt. I just discovered her Pictures of You this summer, and now I see she is a knitter as well. Unlike some writers' blogs which make me frantic about sales and marketing and publishing, and which I am now avoiding, you both inspire me. Lovely.