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A few years ago I met a sister named Kim. She loves books and she loves the girls who love her at Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls. She loves the girls, and so she gives them books to read. She loves the girls, and so she introduces them to authors. She loves the girls, and so she builds entire book festivals on their behalf.

She loves, and she keeps doing. They come and they go from her rousing library (and classrooms).

Enter her school. Walk her halls. Meet her girls, and you can't help but love them back.

This morning I am overwhelmed by this invitation to keynote the 2016 Little Flower Teen Writers and Readers Festival. Overwhelmed to be considered, for one thing. Overwhelmed to be invited in this way. What effort, what time, what forethought went into all of this.

And how it will never be forgotten.

This is love. This is a video of a lifetime.

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Above? That's Libba Bray reading from her forthcoming novel (Lair of Dreams, due out in August) at Children's Book World in Haverford, PA—a scary little ditty that has Amy Sarig King and Gayle Forman shaking in their respective (albeit from opposing sides of the fashion world) boots.

Before them sit many of my neighborhood's finest writers. Also Sister Kim and her Little Flower students. Also bloggers and readers and enthusiasts and at least one bookseller from down the road and shall we go no further before we mention Heather Hebert, who makes it all happen, and with enthusiasm, and while I am at this, because heck, why not, can we locals all just pause for a minute and welcome Margo Rabb to our neighborhood, because she's here now, newly arrived from Austin, with her second YA novel (Kissing in America) due out in May.

(Seems like I might be reading with Margo and two other fabs from Round Here soon, but more on that to come.)

What a performance these three gave—Amy and Libba gamely (respectively) playing the parts of a stoner and a slick boy in a choral reading from Gayle's new bestselling book, I Was Here. Amy giving a thrilling preview of I Crawl Through It. Libba forcing everyone else into scare mode, then zapping the conversation with four parts hysterical ad lib and one part Barbara Waters. And then plenty of talk about the F word, by which I mean (of course) Feminism.

The doors were open at Children's Book World, to dispel all that animal heat. The skies were ripped apart with rain. I headed home among storm-imperiled drivers and then I fell asleep. At which point I dreamed I was still with the gang, only we had moved onto a Friendly's Restaurant (note: Friendly's, I lie not) and we were having high-calorie ice cream and nobody would speak to me. My offense, in my dream, was that I been me—asking too much, pressing too hard.

I woke just after I'd leaned over somebody's shoulder and read the texts that were circulating about me.

"Beth Kephart," it said, "is so annoying."

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Can we give it up this morning for Sister Kim of Little Flower Catholic High School for Girls? Who has ignited her students with a love for stories. Who drives them to their super stars. Who gives them book projects that yield stunning results. Who makes videos that make writers cry. Who puts together a massive and massively successful Little Flower High School Teen Writers & Readers Festival.

(Look for the 2015 festival on April 18, 2015, when I will join a fantastic cast of area writers for a day of workshops, panels, and signings.)

Who writes to me last night to say that 42 copies of Going Over have arrived at her classroom and will be taught this spring.

Who tags me this morning to say:

Going Over is on the 2015 Tayshas Reading List. This was a dream I had. But. I hadn't dared to dream it fully.

Props. To Sister Kim. To the so-generous TAYSHAS committee. To Chronicle Books, whose glorious team members have opened more doors for me than any publishing house ever.

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First among the privileges of attending writing festivals is this: the young people you meet. Just look at those Little Flower Catholic High School girls. Look at those faces, that youth, those smiles, that Sister-Kimberly-Miller-inspired love for books. These students made the enormously successful first Little Flower Teen Writing Festival a few brief Saturdays ago. They (along with all the hard work of Sister Kim and Kate Walton) were the reason we were there.

But the twenty writers who gathered for this event also had the chance to talk with, and support, one another. That, too, is excellent stuff. That, too, makes a weekend.

Today I'd like to share a few opening lines from two of the new books that I brought home, to entice you to go out and find these books for yourselves.

First, from Jennifer Hubbard, author of Try Not to Breathe and The Secret Years, comes her new story, Until It Hurts to Stop, about a teen trying to overcome a legacy of brutal bullying, a teen trying to believe in her own worth. (It's also about hiking, about which Jenn knows a whole lot.)

That story begins like this:

My friend Nick reaches across the cafeteria table and drops a knife into my hand. "Happy birthday, Maggie."

I turn the knife over in my hand. I have always wanted one of these. I've borrowed Nick's often enough, out on the trails.

I know I should hide it. It's a Swiss army knife, not a weapon, but our school gets hysterical over nail clippers. They'd probably confiscate it and put me on some list of budding terrorists.

Even so, I can't resist stroking the smooth metal and snapping open the different tools: the nail file, the screwdriver, the tiny scissors. Best of all, I love the tiny scissors....

Second, from Elizabeth LaBan, a story inspired by an assignment the author herself was given as a teen—to write something called a "tragedy paper." LaBan's novel (The Tragedy Paper) is told in two voices—that of an albino boy who leaves a record of his last semester in a boarding school behind, and that of the boy who discovers and ponders the tale.

That story begins like this:

As Duncan walked through the stone archway leading into the senior dorm, he had two things on his mind: what 'treasure' had been left behind for him and his Tragedy paper. Well, maybe three things: he was also worried about which room he was going to get.

If it wasn't for the middle item, though, he tried to convince himself, he would be almost one hundred percent happy. Almost. But that paper—the Irving School's equivalent of a thesis project—was sucking at least thirty percent of his happiness away, which was a shame on such an important day. Basically, he was going to spend a good portion of the next three months trying to define a tragedy in the literary sense, like what made King Lear a tragedy? Who cared? He could do that right now—a tragedy was when something bad happened. Bad things happened all the time. But the senior English teacher, Mr. Simon—who just happened to be the adult overseer of his hall this year—cared. He cared a lot, and he loved to throw around words like magnitude and hubris....

Of course, no matter how many books I own, I'm always wishing I had room and time for more. But here, for this rainy day, are the start of tales from my big reading pile.

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You could say that I have pretty lousy book-launch party luck. Once, for example, a short first printing left us with only a handful of books for the book party. Once we launched the book on the very same night that every available parking space had already been consumed by another event, sending some would-be party goers home.

And then there was last night—24 hours or so into an historic deluge that had drains busted, streets flooded, cars stranded, basements swimming. This was the GOING OVER launch day. My email kept pinging with notes from people who had planned to come but couldn't. Oh dear, I thought. Oh, my. Because who would drive flooded streets in dark, unstopping rain for a book? Who would dare float toward Berlin?

You could say that I have lousy luck, but I'm not going to claim that here. Because the fact is this: despite impossible weather that demanded all variety of rubber foot gear, we had a party. Pam and Molly of Radnor Memorial Library are famous for their generosity, and there they were again—gracious, open-hearted, slicing into that cake. Beside that cake stood the GOING OVER vessel my clay-arts friend, Karen Bernstein, had made.

And in the audience—because we did have an audience—were my father and husband, neighbors of now and a dear neighbor of then, long-time friends, fellow writers, a Berlin scholar and a Berlin traveler, the inimitable Kevin Ferris of the Inquirer, three sweet-and-smart-as-heck Little Flower Catholic High School students (Kathleen, Amber, Julia) and their Sister Kim, and a Radnor High contingent—Rib, Jim, Tom—who had orchestrated a sweet surprise. They look precisely the same as they did those years ago. I could not believe it.

Then there was Heather, that gorgeous young woman featured above, who was the inspiration for Ada in GOING OVER. Her face. Her deep connection to color and life. Some of the secrets she once whispered into my ear while I sat in her hair-salon chair. I love that I can show you who she is, right here. Ada is one of my favorite characters, and Heather is even greater than fiction.

Those who came last night had to brave the weather. They had to decide to leave their homes in a sinking mess of a day and make the drive. Sister Kim and her girls ultimately spent three hours in a car. Soup had to drive the highways. My father had to dodge the flooded potholes. Kevin had to walk a long block in soaking rain.

Everyone had to disregard the police barrier that signaled that, due to excessive rains, the road to the library was closed.

It was not closed. Pam and Molly made sure of that.

Afterward, my dear friends Elizabeth Mosier and Kelly Simmons treated me to their glorious selves, their raucous laughter, pizza, white wine. But let's get back to their "glorious selves" part.

Thank you. Everyone. For coming. Thank all of you who would have been there if you could. I really believe in this story, GOING OVER. But more than that, I believe in you.

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Two friends meet for lunch and say, What if? What if we have a writing festival for the girls of Little Flower Catholic High? What if we invite 20 authors, offer the girls a chance to learn and workshop , have Kate Walton give the keynote, invite Children's Book World to sell books, and (simply, but never simply) bring this whole publishing thing back to where it belongs: readers connecting with writers connecting with readers.

Book joy.

This, above, is the day that was at the Little Flower Teen Writing Festival. Kate Walton giving the keynote and thanking the tremendous Sister Kim (whose vision this was). Girls in the gym cradling newly bought books as if they were gemstones. The uber talented and radiantly positive girls of my two workshops; some of the props that got us writing; Judy Schachner and me; campus blossoms.

I began this day writing this poem for the girls as they adopt Going Over as a summer read. I spent the rest of it smiling. This, my friends, is what writing is about. Creating stories for, and spending time with, readers who have been given a love for books by a teacher whose heart is huge.

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In just a few hours, I will at long last meet the girls of Little Flower Catholic High School. These girls who are led by the endearing, catalytic, life-changing Sister Kim.  These girls who read Undercover and House of Dance with such love in their hearts. These girls with whom I will sit and write a little memoir, sit and talk a little Berlin, sit and then maybe stand and dance.

This summer, the girls will be reading Going Over and writing a poem somehow evoked or provoked by this story about love on either side of the Berlin Wall 1983.

This morning, I give this poem to them:
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Good morning, Sister Kim, Kate Walton, my fellow authors, and all the Little Flowers. This poem is for you. And here, thanks to kind Serena Agusto-Cox, is another poem, written on another day, about the lit-up glass of others' stories.

The world, my girls, is your oyster.

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